ABSTRACT
The problem of a plate under the action of moving forces has attracted much research attention in the last two decades. Results of these investigations can be employed in many branches of modern transportation engineering, such as the design of track, the track/road beds and bridges for high-speed trains, cars, trucks, parking garages, military ballistic systems, aircraft runways, high-speed precision machining, magnetic disk drivers, and so forth. Most previous studies of a plate subject to moving loads are based on the two-dimensional theories such as the classical plate theory and the first-order shear deformation theory. Fryba (1972) has solved analytically the dynamic responses of a uniform flat plate under a moving load along a specified path. Wu et al. (1987) analyzed the dynamic responses of a flat plate subject to various types ofmoving loads by the finite element method. Later Wang and Lin (1996) analyzed the dynamic behavior of a multi-span continuous Mindlin plate subject to a moving load. Transfer matrix is used to determine the natural frequency and vibration modes of the plate. Marchesiello et al. (1999) analyzed the dynamics of multi-span continuous straight bridges subject to multi-degrees-of-freedom moving vehicle excitation by applying the modal superposition principle. In this chapter, the bridge deck is modeled as an orthotropic plate, and the dynamic
behavior of the bridge deck under moving loads is analyzed basing on the modal superposition principle. The single-span plate under moving loads is introduced firstly in Section 3.2 and the multi-span continuous plate under moving loads is discussed in Section 3.3. These models will be applied to the vehicle-bridge interaction analysis in Chapter 4.
