• Wind and Structures
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• v.5 no.2_3_4
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• pp.257-266
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• 2002

In the recent years flow around bridges are investigated using computer modeling. Selvam (1998), Selvam and Bosch (1999), Frandsen and McRobie (1999) used finite element procedures. Larsen and Walther (1997) used discrete vorticity procedure. The aeroelastic instability is a major criterion to be checked for long span bridges. If the wind speed experienced by a bridge is greater than the critical wind speed for flutter, then the bridge fails due to aeroelastic instability. Larsen and Walther (1997) computed the critical velocity for flutter using discrete vortex method similar to wind tunnel procedures. In this work, the critical velocity for flutter will be calculated directly (free oscillation procedure) similar to the approaches reported by Selvam et al. (1998). It is expected that the computational time required to compute the critical velocity using this approach may be much shorter than the traditional approach. The computed critical flutter velocity of 69 m/s is in reasonable comparison with wind tunnel measurement. The no flutter and flutter conditions are illustrated using the bridge response in time.

• International Journal of Control, Automation, and Systems
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• v.4 no.3
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• pp.382-393
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• 2006

Mechanical system dynamics plays an important role in the area of computational structural biology. Elastic network models (ENMs) for macromolecules (e.g., polymers, proteins, and nucleic acids such as DNA and RNA) have been developed to understand the relationship between their structure and biological function. For example. a protein, which is basically a folded polypeptide chain, can be simply modeled as a mass-spring system from the mechanical viewpoint. Since the conformational flexibility of a protein is dominantly subject to its chemical bond interactions (e.g., covalent bonds, salt bridges, and hydrogen bonds), these constraints can be modeled as linear spring connections between spatially proximal representatives in a variety of coarse-grained ENMs. Coarse-graining approaches enable one to simulate harmonic and anharmonic motions of large macromolecules in a PC, while all-atom based molecular dynamics (MD) simulation has been conventionally performed with an aid of supercomputer. A harmonic analysis of a macroscopic mechanical system, called normal mode analysis, has been adopted to analyze thermal fluctuations of a microscopic biological system around its equilibrium state. Furthermore, a structure-based system optimization, called elastic network interpolation, has been developed to predict nonlinear transition (or folding) pathways between two different functional states of a same macromolecule. The good agreement of simulation and experiment allows the employment of coarse-grained ENMs as a versatile tool for the study of macromolecular dynamics.

• Journal of the Society of Disaster Information
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• v.13 no.2
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• pp.249-257
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• 2017

Recently, a cable disconnection accident occurred due to a lightning strike at the Seohae Bridge located in Dangjin-Pyeongtaek City. This is a natural occurrence, but it is a recall that it is very important to review the safety issues due to the disconnection of cable bridges. In other words, the role of cables in cable bridges has a profound effect on the safety of the structure, and it has become necessary to grasp the effect on the entire structural system. The cable bridge is an economic bridge that builds the main tower and supports the bottom plate by cable. The influence of the cable is the main member, which is a big influence on the safety of the whole bridge system. In the cable-stayed bridge, the cables exhibit nonlinear behavior because of the change in sag, due to the dead weight of the cable, which occurs with changing tension in the cable resulting from the movement of the end points of the cable as the bridge is loaded. Modal analysis is conducted using the deformed dead-load tangent stiffness matrix. A new concept was presented by using divided a cable into several elements in order to study the effect of the cable vibration (both in-plane and swinging) on the overall bridge dynamics. The result of this study demonstrates the importance of cable vibration on the overall bridge dynamics.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.549-562
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• 2017

The US railroad network carries 40% of the nation's total freight. Railroad bridges are the most critical part of the network infrastructure and, therefore, must be properly maintained for the operational safety. Railroad managers inspect bridges by measuring displacements under train crossing events to assess their structural condition and prioritize bridge management and safety decisions accordingly. The displacement of a railroad bridge under train crossings is one parameter of interest to railroad bridge owners, as it quantifies a bridge's ability to perform safely and addresses its serviceability. Railroad bridges with poor track conditions will have amplified displacements under heavy loads due to impacts between the wheels and rail joints. Under these circumstances, vehicle-track-bridge interactions could cause excessive bridge displacements, and hence, unsafe train crossings. If displacements during train crossings could be measured objectively, owners could repair or replace less safe bridges first. However, data on bridge displacements is difficult to collect in the field as a fixed point of reference is required for measurement. Accelerations can be used to estimate dynamic displacements, but to date, the pseudo-static displacements cannot be measured using reference-free sensors. This study proposes a method to estimate total transverse displacements of a railroad bridge under live train loads using acceleration and tilt data at the top of the exterior pile bent of a standard timber trestle, where train derailment due to excessive lateral movement is the main concern. Researchers used real bridge transverse displacement data under train traffic from varying bridge serviceability levels. This study explores the design of a new bridge deck-pier experimental model that simulates the vibrations of railroad bridges under traffic using a shake table for the input of train crossing data collected from the field into a laboratory model of a standard timber railroad pile bent. Reference-free sensors measured both the inclination angle and accelerations of the pile cap. Various readings are used to estimate the total displacements of the bridge using data filtering. The estimated displacements are then compared to the true responses of the model measured with displacement sensors. An average peak error of 10% and a root mean square error average of 5% resulted, concluding that this method can cost-effectively measure the total displacement of railroad bridges without a fixed reference.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.411-423
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• 2023

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.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.32 no.5
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• pp.509-520
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• 2021

The streamlined box is a common type of girders for long-span suspension bridges. Spanning deep canyons, long-span bridges are frequently attacked by strong winds with large angles of attack. In this situation, the flow field around the streamlined box changes significantly, leading to reduction of the flutter performance. The wind fairings have different effects on the flutter performance. Therefore, this study examines the flutter performance of box girders with different wind fairings at large angles of attack. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations were carried out to extract the flutter derivatives, and the critical flutter state of a long-span bridge was determined. Further comparisons of the wind fairings were investigated by a rapid method which is related to the input energy by the aerodynamic force. The results show that a reasonable type of wind fairings could improve the flutter performance of long-span bridges at large angles of attack. For the torsional flutter instability, the wind fairings weaken the adverse effect of the vortex attaching to the girder, and a sharper one could achieve a better result. According to the input energies on the girder with different wind fairings, the symmetrical wind fairings are more beneficial to the flutter performance

• Wind and Structures
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• v.16 no.3
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• pp.249-261
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• 2013

Flexible stay cables on cable-stayed bridges are three-dimensional. They sag and flex in the complex wind environment, which is a different situation to ideal rigid cylinders in two-dimensional wind flow. Aerodynamic interference and the response characteristics of wake galloping of full-scale parallel cables are potentially different due to three-dimensional flows around cables. This study presents a comprehensive wind tunnel investigation of wake galloping of parallel stay cables using three-dimensional aeroelastic cable models. The wind tunnel study focuses on the large spacing instability range, addressing the effects of cable separation, wind yaw angle, and wind angle of attack on wake galloping response. To investigate the effectiveness of vibration suppression measures, wind tunnel studies on the transversely connected cable systems for two types of connections (flexibility and rigidity) at two positions (mid-span and quarter-span) were also conducted. This experimental study provides useful insights for better understanding the characteristics of wake galloping that will help in establishing a guideline for the wind-resistant design of the cable system on cable-stayed bridges.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.82 no.1
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• pp.41-53
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• 2022

We developed an accurate and simple vibration model to calculate the natural frequencies and their corresponding vibration modes for multi-span beam bridges with non-uniform cross-sections. A closed set of characteristic functions of a single-span beam was used to construct the vibration modes of the multi-span bridges, which were considered single-span beams with multiple constraints. To simplify the boundary conditions, the restraints were converted into spring constraints. Then the functional of the total energy has the same form as the penalty method. Compared to the conventional penalty method, the penalty coefficients in the proposed approach can be calculated directly, which can avoid the iteration process and convergence problem. The natural frequencies and corresponding vibration modes were obtained via the minimum total potential energy principle. By using the symmetry of the eigenfunctions or structure, the matrix size can be further reduced, which increases the computational efficiency of the proposed model. The accuracy and efficiency of the proposed approach were validated by the finite element method.

• Computational Structural Engineering
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.337-347
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• 1997

The dynamic responses of highway bridges are varying depending on the features of either traveling vehicles or bridges. In this study, the probabilistic characteristics of dynamic amplification factors of highway bridges due to traveling heavy vehicles have been examined through analytical simulation processes. The truck with tandem axle and tractor with semitrailer are selected as the representative heavy vehicles, which are modeled with three dimensional 7-DOF and 12-DOF models, respectively. The analytical results have been compared with the experimental results of dynamic loading tests and the validity of the analytical models has been examined. Parametric studies on the means and extreme values of amplification factors have been performed with various traffic conditions such as vehicle types, vehicle weights, surface profiles, number of loading vehicles, loading positions, etc.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.37 no.4
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• pp.493-501
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• 2020

The paper describes an optimization method based on the mathematical model of interaction within multibody 'bridge-track-cars" dynamic system. The interaction is connected with considerable dynamic phenomena influenced by high traffic speed (up to 400 km/h) on high-speed railroads. The trend analysis of a structure is necessary to determine the direction and resource of optimizing the system. Thus, scientific methods of decision-making process are necessary. The process requires a great amount of information analysis dealing with behavior and changes of the "bridge-track-cars system" that consists of mechanisms and structures, including transitions. The paper shows the algorithm of multi-criteria optimization that can essentially reduce weight of a bridge superstructure using big data analysis. This reduction is carried out in accordance with the constraints that have to be satisfied in any case. Optimization of real steel-concrete beam is exemplified. It demonstrates possibility of measures that are offered by the algorithm.