Bridge Damage Detection Using Quasi-Static Component of Moving Vehicle-Induced Dynamic Response

Abstract

The critical signal component extracted from the bridge response caused by a moving vehicle is normally used to construct damage index for damage detection. The dynamic response of bridges subjected to moving vehicle includes several components, among which the quasi-static component reflects the inherent characteristics of the bridge. In view of this, this paper presents a bridge damage detection method based on quasi-static component of the moving vehicle-induced dynamic response. First, damage-induced changes of the natural-frequency component, moving-frequency component and quasi-static component responses are investigated via a simply-supported beam bridge. The quasi-static component response is proved to be less sensitive to the moving velocity of the load and more suitable for damage detection. Subsequently, a quasi-static component response extraction method is proposed based on analytical mode decomposition (AMD) and moving average filter (MAF). The extracted quasi-static component response is further employed to localize and quantify damages. Finally, numerical simulations are conducted to examine the feasibility, accuracy and advantages of the proposed damage detection method. The results indicated that the proposed method performs well in different damage scenarios and is insensitive to the moving velocity of the load and road roughness.