Dynamic Vehicle Element Method for Transient Response of Coupled Vehicle-Structure Systems

Abstract

In this paper, the dynamic vehicle element (DVE) method is developed to solve the transient response of a vehicle–structure interaction system in time domain. The DVE method treats the vehicle as a moving part of the entire system, which considers the vehicle influence at the element level by incorporating the detailed interaction between multiple vehicles and the structure induced by irregular road profiles. In addition, a simplified decoupled dynamic nodal loading (DNL) method is proposed. The DNL method generates a time series of concentrated nodal loading which represents the vehicle reaction force on the structure. The DNL method therefore, accounts for the road irregularities and vehicle inertia effect, but neglects the interaction between the two subsystems. The simplified DNL method can be degenerated into the commonly used moving mass (MM) method and moving load (ML) method. The DVE, DNL, MM, and ML methods are compared via the results of four numerical examples. Parametric studies for the effects of road roughness, speed parameter, mass ratio, and frequency ratio on the dynamic vehicle–structure interaction are then carried out using the DVE and DNL methods.