Reliability analysis of the bridge dynamic response in a stochastic vehicle-bridge interaction

Modelling and simulation of the bridge response during vehicle crossing is of the utmost importance in bridge design. In previous works some studies have been conducted on this issue, but parametric statistical investigations and reliability analysis of the bridge response are not studied in the reported literature. In this research, after modelling the bridge-vehicle system, the uncertainties of the vehicles is produced using Gaussian probability distribution function and the statistical parameters of the response is extracted by Monte-Carlo simulation. The results, which are based on the confidence intervals and the variance of the statistical parameters, are obtained to study the effects of uncertainties on the dynamic response of the bridge. In addition, the probabilities of failure are calculated to illustrate a quantitative measure for the simulated statistical results. The most effective parameters on the uncertainty of the bridge response are also presented in this paper.