Numerical Verification of the Drive-By Monitoring Method for Identifying Vehicle and Bridge Mechanical Parameters

Abstract

Featured Application: Using the PRE method, the mechanical parameters (i.e., mass, damping, stiffness) of the vehicle–bridge interaction system and road unevenness can be simultaneously estimated only from vehicle vibration and position data. In this paper, it is clarified by numerical simulation that stiffness reductions of the bridge model can be identified by the PRE method. This result has increased the feasibility of bridge inspection based on vehicle vibration. The PRE (numerical simulation-based vehicle and bridge parameter and road roughness estimation) method uses vehicle vibration data to identify the vehicle’s and bridge’s mechanical parameters and estimate road unevenness simultaneously. This method randomly assumes the mechanical parameters first. Secondly, it solves the vehicle’s IEP (input estimation problem) and the bridge’s DRS (dynamic response simulation) from the vehicle vibration data to obtain road profiles of the front and rear wheels. Repeat the random assumption of the mechanical parameters to minimize the residual between the obtained road unevenness because the road unevenness of the front and rear wheels are expected to match. To search for a better combination of the mechanical parameters, the MCMC (Monte Carlo Markov chain) algorithm is adopted in this paper. This paper also numerically simulates vehicle vibration data for the cases of the reduced-stiffness bridge model and examines whether this method can identify the position, range, and magnitude of stiffness reduction. The numerical simulation results show that bridge-stiffness reduction can be estimated reasonably.