Possibility of bridge inspection through drive-by vehicles

Based on virtual simulations of vehicle-bridge interactions, the possibility of detecting stiffness reduction damages in bridges through vehicle responses has been tested in two dimensional (2D) and three dimensional (3D) settings. Short Time Fourier Transformation (STFT) has been used to process the acceleration data of vehicles. The energy band variation was found strongly related to damage parameters. More important, initial entering conditions of vehicles are critical in obtaining vehicle responses through the vehicle bridge interaction models. Through different levels of road profile roughness, the offset distance needed before executing the vehicle-bridge interaction (VBI) modeling is obtained.

Methods
Series of ABAQUS models are simulated and data extracted through the bridge-vehicle interactions. From the vehicel acceleration data, FFT and short time fourier transformation have been conducted to extract the features of the data.