Vehicle Scanning Method for Bridges Enhanced by Dual Amplifiers

Dual-function amplifiers are proposed for the first time herein for enhancing the capability of a scanning test vehicle for bridges. To start, closed-form solutions are derived for the dynamic responses of the amplifier-vehicle-bridge system with a moving test vehicle. Then, the dynamic amplification factors of the amplifier and vehicle are presented for assessing the bridge/vehicle and vehicle/amplifier transmissibility. It was known that the spectrum of the vehicle may be hindered for extracting the bridge frequencies because of vehicle frequency and rough pavement. Two differentially tuned amplifiers are called on to tackle the problem: one (i.e., the vehicle damper) is to suppress the effect of vehicle’s frequency, acting like the tuned mass damper (TMD), and the other (i.e., the bridge amplifier) is to enlarge the amplitude of bridge frequency of concern. Based on the parametric study, it is concluded that (1) the bridge amplifier performs better than the vehicle one in extracting bridge frequencies by increasing their visibility in the spectrum; (2) the effect of vehicle’s frequency can be suppressed by tuning the vehicle damper such that it functions like a TMD of the vehicle; (3) by tuning the bridge amplifier to any of the first few bridge frequencies, the latter can be well detected even for rough pavement.