In the absent of intensive tests in the wind tunnel, this study provided an effective and accurate approach to estimate the operational driving speed limit on bridges subjected to different road conditions and wind intensities, through a convenient continuous simulation technique (CSP). A fast and rigorous simulation tool, VPSIM is developed to effectively model the vibration of vehicles travelling on bridges by considering the interactions between wind, vehicles and the bridge. The CSP, on the other hand, dramatically reduces the data generation time and makes the stability analysis of vehicles possible. The application of the proposed method on the Confederation Bridge in Canada is presented as a numerical example....[ Read more ]

In the absent of intensive tests in the wind tunnel, this study provided an effective and accurate approach to estimate the operational driving speed limit on bridges subjected to different road conditions and wind intensities, through a convenient continuous simulation technique (CSP). A fast and rigorous simulation tool, VPSIM is developed to effectively model the vibration of vehicles travelling on bridges by considering the interactions between wind, vehicles and the bridge. The CSP, on the other hand, dramatically reduces the data generation time and makes the stability analysis of vehicles possible. The application of the proposed method on the Confederation Bridge in Canada is presented as a numerical example.

Furthermore, a parallel iteration technique (PIT) is proposed to address the non-linear effects on long-span bridges, such as the cable sags and the nonlinearity due to large displacements. The efficient PIT extended the application of the proposed simulation technique to the cable-stayed bridges and the suspension bridges. To more realistically simulate the wind induced effect on these very flexible bridges, the fluttering effect is incorporated into the proposed model. A numerical example is presented in this thesis to roundup the all the techniques proposed.

The simulation result override the public impression that only high-sided vehicle is sensitive to wind attacks, this research demonstrated that a light-weight vehicles are likely to suffer from instability problems on bridges under relatively low wind velocity. Besides, different types of vehicle can undergo different instability mechanism under the same wind condition and the instability mechanism of a vehicle varies with wind speed. The numerical examples also demonstrated that the allowable vehicle speed limit on cable-stayed bridges is significantly lower than that on roads.