Discussion on a Vehicle-Bridge Interaction System Identification in a Field Test

Area of Science:

• Civil Engineering
• Structural Health Monitoring
• Vibration Analysis

Background:

• Sustainable infrastructure necessitates improved maintenance and management efficiency.
• Vibration-based monitoring offers a promising approach for enhancing infrastructure upkeep.
• Existing methods often estimate bridge and road parameters separately from vehicle vibrations.

Purpose of the Study:

• To propose a novel method for simultaneously estimating mechanical parameters of vehicles, bridges, and road unevenness.
• To validate the proposed method through numerical simulations and field tests.
• To assess the impact of the Kalman filter on estimation accuracy.

Main Methods:

• Processing acceleration sensor data from vehicles traversing bridges.
• Developing a constrained method for simultaneous parameter estimation.
• Employing numerical simulations to evaluate the Kalman filter's effect.
• Conducting field tests to measure and verify vehicle/bridge vibrations and road unevenness.

Main Results:

• The proposed method successfully estimated mechanical parameters of vehicles and bridges simultaneously.
• Numerical validation demonstrated the Kalman filter's positive impact on estimation accuracy.
• Field tests confirmed the feasibility of the approach, though estimated road irregularities were slightly smaller than measured values.

Conclusions:

• Simultaneous estimation of vehicle, bridge, and road parameters is feasible using vibration monitoring.
• The Kalman filter improves the accuracy of mechanical parameter estimation.
• Further research is needed to optimize preprocessing and evaluation methodologies for road surface irregularities.