Dynamic interaction between the vehicle and simply supported curved bridge deck

Vehicle - guideway interaction for a vehicle on simply-supported curved bridge decks is studied with the effects of vehicle speed and guideway parameters taken into account. In the dynamic model, the vehicle is considered to have four-degrees of freedom, with lumped masses, linear springs and dampers. Although the material and geometric linearities are preserved in the formulation, the consideration of interaction between the vehicle and the bridge results in a nonlinear structural response. The finite element method is used for solving the governing differential equation of the vehicle - bridge system. In this paper, multi-predictor - corrector procedure in connection with the Newmark method, is employed for the solution of the resulting matrix ordinary differential equations. The deflection at the middle of the beam is determined for different vehicle speed and different radius of curvatures of the curved deck.