ABSTRACT
Bridges require continuous screening for their structural integrity. Recently, authors have studied using an instrumented vehicle to monitor the bridge structural integrity, this concept is known by’ drive-by bridge inspection’. This paper presents a novel method by analyzing the vehicle signal using the Inverse Dynamics Optimization Algorithm to identify the bridge damage. The Inverse Dynamics Optimization algorithm is an optimization scheme used to calculate the moving force history on a bridge. This paper uses the Inverse Algorithm to back calculate the bridge Apparent Profile as a damage indicator. The ‘Apparent Profile’ refers to the summation of a ‘Road Profile Heights’ and ‘Bridge Displacement’. The study uses a half car model with four degrees of freedom. The solution for the Vehicle Bridge Interaction (VBI) is done using the LS-Dyna FEA program. A road roughness class ‘A’ is used to represent the road roughness heights.
