Ride comfort assessment of road vehicle running on long-span bridge subjected to vortex-induced vibration

Long-span bridges with high flexibility and low structural damping are very susceptible to the vortex-induced vibration (VIV), which causes extremely negative impacts on the ride comfort of vehicles running on the bridges. To assess the ride comfort of vehicles running on the long-span bridges subjected to VIV, a coupled wind-vehicle-bridge system applicable to the VIV case is firstly developed in this paper. In this system, the equations of motion of the vehicles and the bridge subjected to VIV are established and coupled through the vehicle-bridge interaction. Based on the dynamic responses of the vehicles obtained by solving the coupled system, the ride comfort of the vehicles can be evaluated using the method given in ISO 2631-1. At last, the proposed framework is applied to several case studies, where a long-span suspension bridge and two types of vehicles are taken into account. The effects of vehicle speed, vehicle type, road roughness and vehicle number on the ride comfort are investigated.