Methodology to Obtain Dynamic Response of Road Bridges Considering Bridge–Vehicle Interactions

Most bridge design standards do not consider a dynamic analysis but instead consider an equivalent static analysis. In addition, the few engineers who carry out dynamic analysis do not usually consider the interaction between the bridge and vehicles. Thus, in this article, a simple methodology to consider the interaction between the bridge and vehicles in the dynamic analysis of bridges is proposed. The proposed method allows determining the dynamic response of road bridges due to the dynamic loads caused by vehicles traveling on rough pavement, taking into account the bridge–vehicle interaction. For illustration purposes, the proposed methodology is applied to a concrete bridge built on the Rio-Santos highway (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil). The bridge was modeled as a simply supported highway box girder bridge without balances divided into beam elements according to the FEM, the pavement-roughness profiles were obtained according to the ISO 8608 standard, four simplified models of vehicles were used, and the dynamic analysis was performed through the Newmark method. The results show that the proposed method is able to determine the dynamic response of the bridge, taking into account the bridge–vehicle interaction. Therefore, the proposed methodology can be recommended as an effective tool to improve bridge design.