Refined Vehicle-Bridge Interaction Analysis Using Incompatible Solid Finite Element for Evaluating Stresses and Impact Factors

Abstract

The vehicle-bridge interaction can induce bridge vibration and consequently fatigue, durability deterioration, local damage, and even collapse of bridge structure. In this paper, a solid vehicle-bridge interaction (VBI) analysis method is developed to provide refined analysis on the bridge responses including displacement and local stress under vehicle loads. The incompatible solid finite element (FE) is introduced to model the bridge, where the element shear locking is alleviated by incompatible displacement modes without sacrificing the computational efficiency. Benchmark example shows the incompatible solid element has superior computational efficiency compared to the conventional solid element. By virtue of the mass-spring-damper vehicle model, the interaction between vehicle and bridge is simulated with point-to-point contact assumption and the coupled dynamic equations are solved via nonlinear iteration. A case study on a simply supported T-girder bridge is conducted to validate the developed solid VBI analysis method and then the dynamic impact factor (DIF) of the bridge is evaluated based on the computed stress results and compared to code values. Results show that the solid VBI analysis method yields more accurate time-history bridge responses including displacement and stress under moving vehicles than the grillage method despite higher computational cost. Particularly, it can simulate realistic stress distribution and concentration along any concerned sections as well as in local components, which can provide detail information on the bridge behavior under dynamic loads. On the other hand, the DIF based on the computed stress result generally agrees well with the code values except for heavy vehicles where the stress-based DIF is slightly higher than the value in Chinese code while lower than that of AASHTO, suggesting the value specified by Chinese code may underestimate the DIF of heavy vehicles in certain circumstances to which more attention should be paid.