• Korean Journal of Construction Engineering and Management
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.108-116
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• 2017

It is expected that the maintenance cost of domestic bridges will increase considerably due to the increase of bridge service time. In response to this situation, the government and relevant ministries are focusing on developing ways to efficiently allocate limited budgets and to rationally select maintenance bridge. In this study, to develop a risk - based bridge maintenance priority decision model, 14 common risk factors causing damage to bridges were extracted and AHP analysis was performed to select 5 important factors. Based on the existing literature review and expert consultation, we derive the evaluation criteria and the impact weights of the selected factors, and based on this, I presented risk based bridge maintenance priority model. Using this model in combination with existing maintenance priority methods will lead to more reasonable bridge maintenance priorities.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.327-335
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• 2018

This paper presents structural assessment of a steel railway bridge for current condition using modal parameter to upgrade finite element modeling in order to gather accurate result. An adequate monitoring, such as acceleration, displacement, strain monitoring, is important tool to understand behavior and to assess structural performance of the structure under surround vibration by means of the dynamic analysis. Evaluation of conditions of an existing steel railway bridge consist of 4 decks, three of them are 14 m, one of them is 9.7 m, was performed with a numerical analysis and a series of dynamic tests. Numerical analysis was performed implementing finite element model of the bridge using SAP2000 software. Dynamic tests were performed by collecting acceleration data caused by surrounding vibrations and dynamic analysis is performed by Operational Modal Analysis (OMA) using collected acceleration data. The acceleration response of the steel bridge is assumed to be governing response quantity for structural assessment and provide valuable information about the current statute of the structure. Modal identification determined based on response of the structure play significant role for upgrading finite element model of the structure and helping structural evaluation. Numerical and experimental dynamic properties are compared and finite element model of the bridge is updated by changing of material properties to reduce the differences between the results. In this paper, an existing steel railway bridge with four spans is evaluated by finite element model improved using operational modal analysis. Structural analysis performed for the bridge both for original and calibrated models, and results are compared. It is demonstrated that differences in natural frequencies are reduced between 0.2% to 5% by calibrating finite element modeling and stiffness properties.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.683-698
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• 2015

Railroad bridges form an integral part of railway infrastructure throughout the world. To accommodate increased axel loads, train speeds, and greater volumes of freight traffic, in the presence of changing structural conditions, the load carrying capacity and serviceability of existing bridges must be assessed. One way is through system identification of in-service railroad bridges. To dates, numerous researchers have reported system identification studies with a large portion of their applications being highway bridges. Moreover, most of those models are calibrated at global level, while only a few studies applications have used globally and locally calibrated model. To reach the global and local calibration, both ambient vibration tests and controlled tests need to be performed. Thus, an approach for system identification of a railroad bridge that can be used to assess the bridge in global and local sense is needed. This study presents system identification of a railroad bridge using free vibration data. Wireless smart sensors are employed and provided a portable way to collect data that is then used to determine bridge frequencies and mode shapes. Subsequently, a calibrated finite element model of the bridge provides global and local information of the bridge. The ability of the model to simulate local responses is validated by comparing predicted and measured strain in one of the diagonal members of the truss. This research demonstrates the potential of using measured field data to perform model calibration in a simple and practical manner that will lead to better understanding the state of railroad bridges.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.373-385
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• 2019

In this article, different frequently adopted modeling aspects of linear and nonlinear dynamic soil-structure interaction (SSI) are studied on a pile-supported integral abutment bridge structure using the open-source platform OpenSees (McKenna et al. 2000, Mazzoni et al. 2007, McKenna and Fenves 2008) for a 2D domain. Analyzed approaches are as follows: (i) free field input at the base of fixed base bridge; (ii) SSI input at the base of fixed base bridge; (iii) SSI model with two dimensional quadrilateral soil elements interacting with bridge and incident input motion propagating upwards at model bottom boundary (with and without considering the effect of abutment backfill response); (iv) simplified SSI model by idealizing the interaction between structural and soil elements through nonlinear springs (with and without considering the effect of abutment backfill response). Salient conclusions of this paper include: (i) free-field motions may differ significantly from those computed at the base of the bridge foundations, thus put a significant bias on the inertial component of SSI; (ii) conventional modeling of SSI through series of soil springs and dashpot system seems to stay on the safer side under dynamic conditions when one considers the seismic actions on the structure by considering a fully coupled SSI model; (iii) consideration of abutment-backfill in the SSI model positively affects the general response of the bridge, as a result of large passive resistance that may develop behind the abutments.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.46 no.3
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• pp.353-370
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• 2013

This paper presents a new method to study the impact factor of an old bridge based on the model updating technique. Using the genetic algorithm (GA) by minimizing an objective function of the residuals between the measured and predicted responses, the bridge and vehicle coupled vibration models were updated. Based on the displacement relationship and the interaction force relationship at the contact patches, the vehicle-bridge coupled system can be established by combining the equations of motion of both the bridge and vehicles. The simulated results show that the present method can simulate precisely the response of the tested bridge; compared with the other bridge codes, the impact factor specified by the bridge code of AASHTO (LRFD) is the most conservative one, and the value of Chinese highway bridge design code (CHBDC) is the lowest; for the large majority of old bridges whose road surface conditions have deteriorated, calculating the impact factor with the bridge codes cannot ensure the reliable results.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.179-192
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• 2008

In a wind tunnel experiment employing a reduced scale model, Reynolds number (Re) can hardly be respected. Its effects on the aerodynamics of closed-box bridge decks have been the subject of research in recent years. Stonecutters Bridge in Hong Kong is a cable-stayed bridge having an unprecedented central span of 1018m. The issue of Re sensitivity was raised early in the design phase of the deck of Stonecutters Bridge. The objective of this study is to summarise the results of various wind tunnel experiments in order to demonstrate the effect of Re on the steady state aerodynamic force coefficients. The results may provide an insight on the choice of scale for section model experiments in bridge design projects. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis of forces on bridge deck section was also carried out to see how CFD results are compared with experimental results.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.457-468
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• 2017

When studying the vibration of a suspension bridge based on the traffic-bridge coupled system, most researchers ignored the contribution of the pavement response. For example, the pavement was simplified as a rigid base and the deformation of pavement was ignored. However, the action of deck pavement on the vibration of vehicles or bridges should not be neglected. This study is mainly focused on establishing a new methodology fully considering the effects of bridge deck pavement, probabilistic traffic flows, and varied road roughness conditions. The bridge deck pavement was modeled as a boundless Euler-Bernoulli beam supported on the Kelvin model; the typical traffic flows were simulated by the improved Cellular Automaton (CA) traffic flow model; and the traffic-pavement-bridge coupled equations were established by combining the equations of motion of the vehicles, pavement, and bridge using the displacement and interaction force relationship at the contact locations. The numerical studies show that the proposed method can more rationally simulate the effect of the pavement on the vibrations of bridge and vehicles.

• International conference on construction engineering and project management
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.533-538
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• 2005

An outline of an Artificial Neural Network (ANN) model for bridge condition rating and the results of a pilot study are presented in this paper. Most BMS implementation systems involve an extensive range of data collection to operate accurately. It takes many years to effectively implement a BMS using existing methodologies. This is due to unmatched data requirements. Such problems can be overcome by adopting the ANN model presented in this paper. The objective of the proposed model is to predict bridge condition ratings using historical bridge inspection data for effective BMS operation.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.189-206
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• 2011

In this study, the subspace stochastic realization theories (SSR model I and SSR model II) have been applied to a real bridge for estimating its dynamic characteristics (natural frequencies, damping constants, and vibration modes) under ambient vibration. A numerical simulation is carried out for an arch-type steel truss bridge using a white noise excitation. The estimates obtained from this simulation are compared with those obtained from the Finite Element (FE) analysis, demonstrating good agreement and clarifying the excellent performance of this method in estimating the structural dynamic characteristics. Subsequently, these methods are applied to the vibration induced by both strong and weak winds as obtained by remote monitoring of the Kabashima bridge (an arch-type steel truss bridge of length 136 m, and situated in Nagasaki city). The results obtained with this experimental data reveal that more accurate estimates are obtained when strong wind vibration data is used. In contrast, the vibration data obtained from weak wind provides accurate estimates at lower frequencies, and inaccurate accuracy for higher modes of vibration that do not get excited by the wind of lower intensity. On the basis of the identified results obtained using both simulated data and monitored data from a real bridge, it is determined that the SSR model II realizes more accurate results than the SSR model I. In general, the approach investigated in this study is found to provide acceptable estimates of the dynamic characteristics of highway bridges as well as for the vibration monitoring of bridges.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.46 no.1
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• pp.93-105
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• 2023

This paper examines a high-speed railway CRTS-II ballastless track-bridge system. Using the stationary potential energy theory, the mapping analytical solution between the bridge deformation and the rail vertical geometric irregularity was derived. A theoretical model (TM) considering the nonlinear stiffness of interlayer components was also proposed. By comparing with finite element model results and the measured field data, the accuracy of the TM was verified. Based on the TM, the effect of bridge deformation amplitude, girder end cantilever length, and interlayer nonlinear stiffness (fastener, cement asphalt mortar layer (CA mortar layer), extruded sheet, etc.) on the rail vertical geometric irregularity were analyzed. Results show that the rail vertical deformation extremum increases with increasing bridge deformation amplitude. The girder end cantilever length has a certain influence on the rail vertical geometric irregularity. The fastener and CA mortar layer have basically the same influence on the rail deformation amplitude. The extruded sheet and shear groove influence the rail geometric irregularity significantly, and the influence is basically the same. The influence of the shear rebar and lateral block on the rail vertical geometric irregularity could be negligible.