Influence of Fluid Viscous Damper on the Dynamic Response of Suspension Bridge under Random Traffic Load

Fluid viscous dampers (FVDs) are widely used in long-span suspension bridges for earthquake resistance. To analyze efficiently the influences of FVDs on the dynamic response of a suspension bridge under high-intensity traffic flow, a bridge-vehicle coupling method optimized by isoparametric mapping and improved binary search in this work was first developed and validated. Afterwards, the traffic flow was simulated on the basis of monitored weigh-in-motion data. The dynamic responses of bridge were analyzed by the proposed method under different FVD parameters. Results showed that FVDs could positively affect bridge dynamic response under traffic flow. The maximum accumulative longitudinal girder displacement, longitudinal girder displacement, and longitudinal pylon acceleration decreased substantially, whereas the midspan girder bending moment, pylon bending moment, longitudinal pylon displacement, and suspender force were less affected. The control efficiency of maximum longitudinal girder displacement and accumulative girder displacement reached 33.67% and 57.71%, longitudinal pylon acceleration and girder bending moment reached 31.51% and 7.14%, and the pylon longitudinal displacement, pylon bending moment, and suspender force were less than 3%. The increased damping coefficient and decreased velocity exponent can reduce the bridge dynamic response. However, when the velocity exponent was 0.1, an excessive damping coefficient brought little improvement and may lead to high-intensity work under traffic flow, which will adversely affect component durability. The benefits of low velocity exponent also reduced when the damping coefficient was high enough, so if the velocity exponent has to be increased, the damping coefficient can be enlarged to fit with the velocity exponent. The installation of FVDs influences dynamic responses of bridge structures in daily operations and this issue warrants investigation. Thus, traffic load should be considered in FVD design because structural responses are perceptibly influenced by FVD parameters.