The Earthquake Engineering Online Archive

Interaction Between High-Speed Moving Vehicles and Flexible Structures: An Analysis without Assumption of Known Vehicle Nominal Motion

Vu-Quoc, Loc; Olsson, Mats

UCB/SEMM-1987/10, Dept. of Civil Engineering, University of California, Berkeley, 1987-12, 60 pages

Traditionally, in analyses of vehicle/structure interaction, especially when a vehicle mass comes in direct contact with the structure, vehicle nominal motion is often prescribed a-priori, and therefore unaffected by the structure flexibility. In this paper, a methodology is proposed in which this restriction is removed, allowing the vehicle nominal motion to become unknown, and encompassing the traditional approach as a particular case. General nonlinear equations of motion of a building-block model, applicable to both wheel-on-rail and magnetically levitated vehicles, are derived. These equations are simplified to a set of mildly nonlinear equations upon introducing additional assumptions -- essentially on small structural deformation. Efficient and reliable predictor/corrector algorithms are proposed to integrate the nonlinear, coupled, spatially discrete equations of motion. Several examples are given to illustrate the present formulation.

Available online: http://nisee.berkeley.edu/documents/SEMM/SEMM-87-10.pdf (3 MB)