Improved inversion of highway traffic loads by eliminating usual environmental microvibrations

Abstract

Usual environmental microvibrations (UEMs) can introduce inaccuracies for field-measured traffic-induced vibration responses, leading to significant errors in the inversion of highway traffic loads. This study proposed a method for eliminating UEMs in combination with the inverse pseudoexcitation method to invert highway traffic loads. The real vibration response caused by traffic loads was obtained by separating the UEM component from the measured ground vibration response of a site through a frequency-domain transformation. The frequency response function was subsequently derived using finite element simulation technology. Finally, the traffic load spectrum was inversely identified by performing a matrix inversion operation on the frequency response function matrix. The vibration response at a measurement point was calculated using the inverted traffic load spectrum from a synchrotron radiation light source project and compared with field measurements. The relative error decreased from 21.15% to 6.82%, validating the effectiveness of the proposed method. This approach avoided a complex vehicle-road coupling analysis and provided a reliable technical means for load inversion at sites sensitive to microvibration.

Keywords

inverse pseudoexcitation method / usual environmental microvibrations (UEMs) / highway traffic loads / microvibration-sensitive sites

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Funding

National Key Research and Development Program of China(2023YFF0616500)