Dynamic interaction between heavy vehicles and highway bridges

This paper discusses the importance of dynamic interaction (coupling) between heavy vehicles and highway bridges. A new method for calculating the dynamic response of bridges to dynamic wheel loads is presented, and used to investigate a simply-supported bridge traversed by a single degree of freedom vehicle model. Six non-dimensional parameters of the bridge-vehicle system are varied to assess the amount of interaction between the vehicle and the bridge. Guidelines are presented to ascertain when dynamic interaction is important and when it can be ignored. Copyright (C) 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd.