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Civil-Comp Proceedings
ISSN 1759-3433
CCP: 91
PROCEEDINGS OF THE TWELFTH INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON CIVIL, STRUCTURAL AND ENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING COMPUTING
Edited by: B.H.V. Topping, L.F. Costa Neves and R.C. Barros
Paper 83

The Impact of a Bump on the Response of a Bridge to Traffic

A. González, D. Cantero and E.J. OBrien

School of Architecture, Landscape and Civil Engineering, University College Dublin, Ireland

Full Bibliographic Reference for this paper
, "The Impact of a Bump on the Response of a Bridge to Traffic", in B.H.V. Topping, L.F. Costa Neves, R.C. Barros, (Editors), "Proceedings of the Twelfth International Conference on Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering Computing", Civil-Comp Press, Stirlingshire, UK, Paper 83, 2009. doi:10.4203/ccp.91.83
Keywords: vehicle, bridge, dynamics, shear, expansion joint, highway.

Summary
This paper addresses the need of exploring the dynamics associated with the shear load effect on short- and medium-span bridges for traversing traffic, with special attention at damaged expansion joints. It is not rare to have a significant discontinuity at this location. Any step on the road surface influences the vehicle dynamics and subsequently the bridge response as well.

The influence of shear dynamic amplification factor (DAF) values has been investigated by direct comparison of two vehicle configurations: a typical five-axle truck and a crane truck. The main difference between both vehicles is the presence of a hinge in the articulated truck allowing it to be more flexible than the crane. A numerical vehicle-bridge interaction (VBI) model was develop for Euler-Bernoulli beams, that accounts for profile roughness obtained from an stochastic process, and various bump shapes representing the damaged joint discontinuity. Using the described model within a Monte Carlo simulation scheme, a sensitivity study has been carried out for many possible bridge spans, speeds, vehicle characteristics, severity of damaged expansion joints and profile roughness. In addition, multiple vehicle meeting scenarios have been thoroughly studied for many possible traffic situations.

The results clearly show that the highest shear DAF values occur on shorter spans and that they are directly related to the damage severity of the expansion joint. Furthermore, massive rigid vehicles with a lot of axles like cranes, that could govern the assessment of a bridge, are less influenced by large road discontinuities prior to the bridge and tend to produce significantly smaller dynamic increments in shear than five-axle trucks. Overall, the higher the static load effect, the smaller the dynamic amplification factor for shear forces at supports.

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