Development of an analytical model for treating bridge-vehicle interaction

In order to check the capacity of existing bridges to heavier traffic and for proper design of new bridges, bridge engineers require improved analytical techniques which consider bridge-vehicle interaction. This paper treats the development of such an interaction model incorporating the dynamic effects of moving vehicles. The bridge superstructure is idealised as a two-dimensional grillage, while the three-dimensional vehicle model has 7 degrees-of-freedom and is capable of accommodating both roll and pitch. The proposed system enables the bridge to be excited by an asymmetric forcing action. The entire procedure for the interaction of the bridge-vehicle system is implemented as an anlytical computer package, able to investigate the influences of various parameters which contribute to the behaviour of a bridge-vehicle system.