Study on the Technical Status of Old Concrete Truss-Arch Bridge Based on Vehicle-Bridge Interaction

Abstract

With the rapid development of the country’s economy, a large number of heavy vehicles are being used due to the expansion of transportation demand and increased transportation costs. For the old concrete truss-arch bridges built in the last century, the bridges may hardly meet the modern traffic volume. With respect to old bridges in poor condition, it takes more time and resources to evaluate the technical status by field load tests, and there are some safety risks. A finite element method based on vehicle-bridge coupled vibration theory was proposed for evaluating the technical status of concrete truss-arch bridges in this paper. An old concrete truss-arch bridge in the suburbs of Suzhou, China, was selected as the research object. The field static and dynamic load tests were conducted and the results are consistent with the results of the numerical simulation based on the method proposed in this study. It can be concluded that the proposed numerical method can be widely used to assess the technical state of the old concrete truss-arch bridges in poor condition.