A COMPUTATIONAL METHOD FOR THE TRAFFIC VIBRATION AND SOUND RADIATION OF HINGED-JOINTED SLAB BRIDGE AND THE ANALYSIS OF INFLUENCING FACTORS

Hinged-jointed slab bridges are widely used in urban and rural roads in China. The traffic vibration and structure-borne sound of this kind of bridge have great influence on the acoustic environment nearby. In this paper, a procedure for analyzing the vibration and sound radiation of this kind of bridge is introduced and verified. Firstly, a computational method of vehicle-bridge coupling vibration is presented for this kind of bridge, in which the bridge is modeled by separated beams, the interaction between them are simulated by the shear key deck method, and the tire loads of vehicles are distributed on these beams. Secondly, the boundary element method is used to calculate the sound radiation of the bridge, while the vibration velocity of the bridge structure from the vibration analysis is introduced. Finally, the proposed method is validated in the experiment of a practical bridge. Based on the current method, the influencing factors of sound radiation of this bridge are discussed. The results indicate that strengthening the lateral connection of the beams, reducing the roughness of the road surface and adopting the continuous bridge deck without expansion joints are effective ways to decrease the sound radiation of hinged-jointed slab bridges.