Structural Engineering and Mechanics

Volume 31, Number 6, 2009, pages 737-749

DOI: 10.12989/sem.2009.31.6.737

Vibration analysis of a uniform beam traversed by a moving vehicle with random mass and random velocity

T-P. Chang, M-F. Liu and H-W. O

Abstract

The problem of estimating the dynamic response of a distributed parameter system excited by a moving vehicle with random initial velocity and random vehicle body mass is investigated. By adopting the Galerkin\'s method and modal analysis, a set of approximate governing equations of motion possessing time-dependent uncertain coefficients and forcing function is obtained, and then the dynamic response of the coupled system can be calculated in deterministic sense. The statistical characteristics of the responses of the system are computed by using improved perturbation approach with respect to mean value. This method is simple and useful to gather the stochastic structural response due to the vehicle passenger-bridge interaction. Furthermore, some of the statistical numerical results calculated from the perturbation technique are checked by Monte Carlo simulation.

Key Words

Galerkin

Address

T-P. Chang: Department of Construction Engineering, National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, ROC M-F. Liu: Department of Applied Mathematics, I-Shou University, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, ROC H-W. O: Department of Construction Engineering, National Kaohsiung First University of Science and Technology, Kaohsiung, Taiwan, ROC