Bridge-vehicle coupled vibration response and static test data based damage identification of highway bridges

In order to identify damage of highway bridges rapidly, a method for damage identification using dynamic response of bridge induced by moving vehicle and static test data is proposed. To locate damage of the structure, displacement energy damage index defined from the energy of the displacement response time history is adopted as the indicator. The displacement response time histories of bridge structure are obtained from simulation of vehicle-bridge coupled vibration analysis. The vehicle model is considered as a four-degree-of-freedom system, and the vibration equations of the vehicle model are deduced based on the D\'Alembert principle. Finite element method is used to discretize bridge and finite element model is set up. According to the condition of displacement and force compatibility between vehicle and bridge, the vibration equations of the vehicle and bridge models are coupled. A Newmark-B algorithm based professional procedure VBAP is developed in MATLAB, and used to analyze the vehicle-bridge system coupled vibration. After damage is located by employing the displacement energy damage index, the damage extent is estimated through the least-square-method based model updating using static test data. At last, taking one simply supported bridge as an illustrative example, some damage scenarios are identified using the proposed damage identification methodology. The results indicate that the proposed method is efficient for damage localization and damage extent estimation.