Innovative Bridge Condition Assessment from Dynamic Response of a Passing Vehicle

Abstract

An innovative approach for damage assessment of a bridge deck is proposed with the measured dynamic response of a vehicle moving on top of a structure. The simply supported bridge deck is modeled as a Euler–Bernoulli beam. The moving vehicle serves as a smart sensor and force transducer in the structural system. The damage is defined as the flexural stiffness reduction in the beam finite element. The identification algorithm is based on dynamic response sensitivity analysis, and it is realized with a regularization technique from the measured vehicle acceleration measurement. Measurement noise, road surface roughness, and model errors are included in the simulations, and the results indicate that the proposed algorithm is computationally stable and efficient, and the identified results are acceptable and not sensitive to the different parameters studied.