Ride comfort and impact factor of a seven-span continuous cable-stayed bridge

This study was conducted to investigate the vibration serviceability and impact coefficient of a seven-span continuous cable-stayed bridge planned for an expressway extension using a three-dimensional vehicle–bridge coupled vibration analysis. For the bridge design, deflection under the designed live load of the continuous cable-stayed bridge did not meet the deflection limit specified in “Japanese Design Specifications for Highway Bridges.” The excessive deflection indicates the possibility of poor vibration serviceability. To clarify the bridge vibration serviceability, the dynamic responses of the bridge and passing vehicles were examined using the three-dimensional vehicle–bridge coupled vibration analysis. The three-dimensional analysis was validated by comparing the vibration response of a single-span steel cable-stayed bridge in service subjected to vehicle running tests with those numerical responses from the three-dimensional analysis. The ride comfort of vehicles on the bridge was assessed in terms of vibration serviceability according to the ISO 2613-1 international standard for evaluating whole-body vibration exposure. The observation from the simulation-based investigation demonstrated that the vehicle response does not exceed the ride comfort limit irrespective of vehicle, road, and running conditions. In other words, the findings confirmed a negligible effect of large deflections on driving safety. The impact factors were found to be less than 1.05 for the main girder, less than 1.03 for the main tower base, and less than 1.04 for the cable. The impact factor was greatest when several vehicles were running at resonant headway.