Determination method of limit vehicle bump height in dynamic load test of simply supported bridge

The bump height is one of the key factors which affects the vehicle bump test. If the adopted value of bump height is too small, the test couldn’t get obvious excitation effect for bridge structures. On the other hand, it will cause additional structural damage when the value is rather large. Aiming at this point, the theoretical calculation method to determine limit bump height is proposed in this paper. The vehicle bump test is decomposed into three stages, i.e., the period before rear wheels contacting with bridge, the moment at rear wheels contacting with bridge, the period after rear wheels contacting with bridge. In stage I, the total momentum generated by vehicle rotating around front wheels is calculated. Then, the initial conditions for stage III are derived using the principle of momentum conservation in stage II. Finally, combining with vehicle-bridge coupling equations, the free-decay response of bridge could be calculated to determine the limit bump height in stage III. In this paper, the reliability of the proposed method is validated by finite element method (FEM), and numerical simulations on an actual simply supported hollow slab bridge are used to calculate the dynamic response of bridge considering various transverse positions of vehicle bump and determine the limit bump height.