Vehicle Bridge Interaction Analysis on Concrete and Steel Curved Bridges

Abstract

This study investigation is intended to research the dynamic response of horizontally curved bridges under heavy vehicle loads. Most of the main factors that affect the bridge dynamic response due to moving vehicles are considered. An improved 3D grid model, based on commercial software ANSYS Mechanical APDL, is developed for the analysis of curved bridges following the 3D shear-flexibility grillage analyzing method. A simplified numeric method, considering the effect of random road roughness and its velocity term, is developed for solving the interaction problem. With the model and numerical method presented, a series of parametric studies are conducted to study the curved bridge dynamic interaction. Based on the investigation of determining factors of curve bridge dynamic interaction, the expression of the upper-bound envelop for impact factors of maximum deflection is given with different surface conditions and highway speed limits as a function of bridge fundamental frequency or bridge central angle. A study is conducted on comparing these empirical equations and serval other major design codes, comments and suggestions are then made based on the discoveries.