Influence of Random Vehicle–Bridge Coupling Vibration on the Anti-Disturbance Performance of Concrete Materials

Abstract

Without interrupting the traffic on the old bridge, the connection of the widening bridge will cause disturbance to the concrete in the splicing position. In order to study the anti-disturbance performance of concrete material, the Normal Concrete (NC) material and the Ultra-High-Performance Concrete (UHPC) material were experimentally investigated by the vertical shaking table and X-ray computed tomography scanning. It can be learnt from tests that the compressive strength of NC and UHPC can be increased by about 10% to 20% after disturbance, while the flexural tensile strength and splitting tensile strength of both NC and UHPC can be reduced by about 20% to 25% and 10% to 20%, respectively. The elastic modulus of UHPC is not significantly affected by the vibration disturbance, and that of NC can be increased by about 20%. The setting time difference of the proposed NC material can be controlled within 100 min, and it can improve its anti-disturbance performance. Excessive vibration disturbance affects the internal structure of NC, while it has little effect on the distribution of steel fiber in UHPC. Due to the high cost of UHPC materials, it is recommended to analyze the joint performance requirements before the selection of splicing materials. If the stress requirement is not particularly high, it is still recommended to apply the proposed NC material for the splicing of widening bridge.