ABSTRACT
Bridges built over wide fjord crossings (2,000 to 5,500 m) will serve as critical structures for Norway’s new E39 coastal highway. An important capability for the Norwegian Public Roads Administration is the evaluation of the level of accident risk for motor vehicles on cable-stayed and floating bridges during high velocity wind events. This work develops a simple computational model to evaluate the importance of bridge-vehicle interaction in the vehicle-bridge-driver system excited by wind. The present results suggest that the vehicle-bridge interaction forces may be small in magnitude relative to aerodynamic forces on the structure and the vehicle. Future analyses may be simplified by obtaining the response of the bridge and using it as an input to an isolated vehicle dynamics model. The limitations of the model are discussed along with the challenges of achieving more accurate safety analyses. The need for data from field tests is motivated and the parameters for a planned experimental study using a large van on an existing long-span bridge are presented.
