Dynamic Response of Simply-supported Curved Girder Bridges due to Vehicles

The purpose of this paper, for which a finite element bridge model with 7 degrees of freedom per node and the 1/4 vehicle model with six parameters were established, is to analyze the dynamic response of curved girder bridges under vehicular loads. In the numerical simulation, the vibration characteristics of simply-supported curved girder bridge are analyzed, and the effect to the impact factors were also studied for different radiuses of curvature, eccentricities, ratios between bending and torsion stiffness, and vehicle speeds. The simulated results show that not all the first 5 natural frequencies increase with the variation of radius of curvature. The impact factor variations of vertical deflection and torsion angle are not uniform when parameters changed, and the impact factor of torsion angle would be much larger than that of vertical deflection under the same conditions.