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Civil-Comp Proceedings
ISSN 1759-3433
CCP: 28
COMPUTATIONAL STRUCTURAL ENGINEERING FOR PRACTICE
Edited by: M. Papadrakakis and B.H.V. Topping
Paper II.4

Comparison of Results from Vibration Testing and Finite Element Analysis of a Highway Bridge

O.S. Salawu, C. Williams and P.J. Hewson

School of Civil & Structural Engineering, University of Plymouth, Plymouth, United Kingdom

Full Bibliographic Reference for this paper
O.S. Salawu, C. Williams, P.J. Hewson, "Comparison of Results from Vibration Testing and Finite Element Analysis of a Highway Bridge", in M. Papadrakakis, B.H.V. Topping, (Editors), "Computational Structural Engineering for Practice", Civil-Comp Press, Edinburgh, UK, pp 61-69, 1994. doi:10.4203/ccp.28.2.4
Abstract
Results from full-scale forced vibration testing and finite element analysis of a reinforced concrete bridge structure are presented and discussed in the paper. The bridge was excited by a hydraulic vibrator while accelerometers were used to measure the dynamic response. Seven vibration modes were identified in the frequency range 0-25 Hz. Modal analysis of the response data was conducted to extract the modal parameters. The damping value, as a percentage of critical damping, ranged from 1.6 percent to 2.7 percent. The bridge was modelled using engineering beam and two dimensional plate elements. The experimentally identified frequencies and mode shapes were compared with results from a finite element analysis. Overlay plots of the analytical and experimental mode shapes show that the two sets of results are well correlated Except for mode 4, the average error between measured and predicted natural frequencies is less than 7 percent. Further details of the experimental procedure and theoretical analysis are described in the paper.

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