Bayesian Vehicle Load Estimation, Vehicle Position Tracking, and Structural Identification for Bridges with Strain Measurement

Vehicle load estimation and health monitoring of bridges are of great importance for the health monitoring of bridge structure under vehicle loads. Traditional methods for the estimation of vehicle load require the positions of the vehicles. The vehicle position tracking is generally conducted in offline manner and requires the installation of additional sensors. To resolve these problems, we developed a Bayesian probabilistic approach for the online estimation of vehicle loads, vehicle positions, and structural parameters for bridges. The crux is to model the vehicle load vector as a modulated filtered Gaussian white noise due to the fact that the vehicle-bridge interaction forces are in essence the responses of the vehicle-bridge coupled system under the excitation of the road roughness described by Gaussian random field and the constant vehicle weights. Furthermore, the vehicle speed vector is introduced to track the unknown positions of vehicles. There are three appealing features in this approach. First, it allows the simultaneous estimation of vehicle loads, vehicle positions, and structural parameters in an online manner. Second, this method allows for time-varying vehicle speed tracking. Third, the proposed method is applicable to the case with multiple vehicles. Examples for the case where single/multiple vehicles pass across bridges with uniform speeds/variable speeds are presented to demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed method for vehicle load estimation, vehicle position tracking, and bridge structural identification using only strain measurements.