Improved Twin I-Girder Curved Bridge-Vehicle Interaction Analysis and Human Sensitivity to Vibration

The perceptible vibration of curved twin I-girder bridges under traffic loads is an important design consideration, because this bridge have rather low torsional stiffness that produce excessive vibrations. The objective of this investigation was to study the vibration of curved twin I-girder bridges due to moving vehicles and the effect of vibrations on bridge users. To this end, a comprehensive three-dimensional finite element models for bridge and vehicle are developed by using ANSYS code for studying bridge-vehicle interaction and the resultant sensitivity to vibration. Truck parameters include the body, the suspension and the tires. Gap and actuator elements are incorporated into the tire models to simulate the separation between the tires and road surface, and road surface roughness, respectively. Road roughness profiles are generated from power spectral density and cross spectral functions. To couple the motion of the bridge and vehicle, Lagrange multipliers and constraint equations are utilized through the augmented Lagrangian method. A parametric study is performed to identify the effect of various parameters on the vibration of the bridge. The results have been expressed in the form of human perceptibility curves. This study finds that the bridge response is significantly influenced by the road roughness, bump height at expansion joint and vehicle speeds. The results show that the inclusion of features such as increasing the torsional stiffness by providing additional stiffened bracing has major effects on the reduction of perceptible vibration.