Abstract:
Weigh-In-Motion (WIM) is a system used for determining weights of vehicles moving on roads or bridges from their structural responses. Comparatively, the application of this system to bridges yields better accuracy due to less effect from impact on bridges than roads. However, to achieve accurate weight determination, the velocity, the axle spacing and the position of the vehicle have to be precisely identified. In practice, bridge responses are measured by using strain gauges. Therefore, it is appropriate that the same gauges are used as the device for determining the velocity, the axle spacing and the position of the axles. In this research, an effective gauge configuration is proposed to provide more accurate time determination when the vehicle axles are on the monitored bridge sections. Consequently, accurate velocity and axle spacings of vehicles can be obtained. Moreover, the strain signals from the proposed gauge configuration can also be used to identify the number of vehicle' axles and the traffic lane being used. The proposed method was verified by scaled-model tests. The bridge was modeled by a steel plate having width, length and thickness of 50, 200 and 1 cm, respectively. The vehicle was modeled by a two-axle moving load having a weight ratio of the front axle to the rear axle of 1 and 0.33 respectively. The axle spacings of the vehicle model were set to 15, 20, 25, 30, 40, 50, 60 and 70 cm. The test results indicate that the bridge strains obtained from the proposed configuration of the gauges can correctly identify the lane of the vehicle and its number of axles. For the velocity and the axle spacing determination, errors of about ±10 and ±7 percent were observed respectively. These results are substantially better than those obtained from the method proposed by previous researchers.