Free vibration analysis of continuous bridge under the vehicles

Free vibration analysis for continuous bridge under any number of vehicles is conducted in this paper. Calculation strategy for natural frequency and mode shape is proposed based on Euler-Bernoulli beam theory and numerical assembly method. Firstly, a half-car planar model is adopted; equations of motion and displacement functions for bridge and vehicle are established, respectively. Secondly, the undermined coefficient matrices for wheels, vehicles, intermediate support, left-end support and right-end support are derived. Then, the numerical assembly technique for conventional finite element method is adopted to construct the overall matrix of coefficients for whole system. Finally, natural frequencies and corresponding mode shapes are determined based on iterative method and overall matrix solution. Numerical simulation is presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed method. The results reveal that the solutions of present method are exact ones. Natural frequencies and associate modal shapes of continuous bridge under different conditions of vehicles are investigated. The influences of vehicle parameters on natural frequencies are also demonstrated.