Department of Petroleum Engineering, Missouri University of Science and Technology, Rolla, MO 65401, USA

A damage detection method is proposed, which utilizes dynamic displacement of bridge structures under moving vehicle. The problem is first elaborated with closed-form solution of dynamic displacement, which is decomposed into quasi-static component and dynamic component. Dynamic curvature is defined as second derivative of the dynamic displacement for detecting damage location and estimating damage extent. Damage is modeled by local reduction of stiffness in this paper. Numerical study was conducted on a simply supported beam to verify the proposed method. Vehicle model is analyzed with Newmark’s method using Matlab to obtain the contact force acting on the bridge. Beam model is established in commercial finite element software ABAQUS. The effects of road surface roughness and vehicle-bridge interaction are both considered in the analysis. In order to identify damage location and extent, dynamic curvature was calculated with midspan displacement. Parametric study on measurement noise level, damage location, damage extent, and multiple damage cases is performed, and the analysis results show both reliability and efficacy of this method in damage detection of bridge structures. At last, conclusions are drawn for its application to bridges in engineering practice