Dynamic Experiments of the Incrementally Prestressed Concrete Girder Railway Bridge for Evaluation of Natural Frequencies and Damping Ratios

다단계 긴장 PSC 거더 철도교량의 고유진동수 및 감쇠비 평가를 위한 동적실험

As an alternative of conventional prestressed concrete (PSC) girders, various types of PSC girders are being developed and applied in bridge structures. Incrementally prestressed concrete girder is one of these newly developed girders. According to design concept, these new types of PSC girders have considerable advantages to reduce their self-weight and make spans longer. However, dynamic interaction between bridge superstructures and passing trains would be sometimes one of critical issues in these more flexible railway bridges. Therefore, it is very important to evaluate modal parameters of newly designed bridges before conducting dynamic analyses. In the present paper, a 25 meters long full scale PSC girder was fabricated as a test specimen and modal testing was carried out to evaluate modal parameters including natural frequencies and modal damping ratios at every prestressing stage. In the modal testing, a digitally controlled vibration exciter as well as an impact hammer is applied to obtain frequency response functions more exactly and the modal parameters are evaluated varying with construction stages. Prestressed force effects on changes of modal parameters are analyzed at every incremental prestressing stage.