Traffic-induced vibrations at the wet joint during the widening of concrete bridges and non-interruption traffic control strategies

The rapid development of road transport has increased the number of bridges that require widening. A critical issue in the construction of bridge widening is the influence of vibrations of the old bridge on the casting of wet joint concrete between the old and new bridges owing to the running traffic. Typically, the bridge is closed to traffic during the pouring of wet joint concrete, which negatively affects the existing transportation network. In this study, a newly developed microscopic traffic load modeling approach and the vehicle-bridge interaction theory are incorporated to develop a refined numerical framework for the analysis of random traffic-bridge coupled dynamics. This framework was used to investigate traffic-induced vibrations at the wet joint of a widened bridge. Based on an experimental study on the vibration resistance of wet joint concrete, traffic control strategies were proposed to ensure the construction performance of cast-in-site wet joint concrete under random traffic without interruption. The results show that the vibration displacement and frequency of the old bridge, estimated by the proposed framework, were comparable with those obtained from field measurements. Based on the target peak particle velocity and vibration amplitude of the wet joint concrete, it was found that traffic control measures, such as limiting vehicle gross weight and limiting traffic volume by closing an additional traffic lane, could ensure the construction performance of the wet joint concrete.