Irregularities and Roughness

Abstract

The periodically repeated pavement irregularities and their effect on the dynamic behavior of a bridge are the subject of this paper, as well as a new point of view of how the surface roughness operates on vehicles. The authors observed that the models used so far accept that the wheels are always in contact with the roughness curve. But in reality the wheels only come in contact with the peaks of the roughness curve by applying impact forces. The theoretical formulation is based on a continuous approach that has been used in literature to analyze such bridge. The procedure is carried out by the modal superposition method, while the obtained equations are solved by using Duhamel’s integrals. Important conclusions for structural design purposes can be drawn through a variety of numerical examples.