Safety Analysis of Moving Road Vehicles on a Long Bridge under Crosswind

This paper presents a safety analysis of high-sided road vehicles running on a long span cable-stayed bridge when the road vehicle enters a sharp-edged crosswind gust while the bridge is oscillating under fluctuating winds. Road vehicle accidents, including overturning, excessive sideslip, and exaggerated rotation, are defined first. The mathematical model and the equation of motion of coupled road vehicle–bridge systems under crosswind are then established, which include road surface roughness, vehicle suspension, and the sideslip of the vehicle tire relative to the bridge deck in the lateral direction. A case study using a real long cable-stayed bridge and a high-sided road vehicle is finally conducted, and an extensive computational work is performed to obtain a series of accident vehicle speed against mean crosswind speed, by which the decision on the threshold of mean wind speed above which the bridge should be closed to the road vehicle can be made. The obtained accident vehicle speeds are also compared with those for the same vehicles running on the ground. It is shown that the oscillation of the cable-stayed bridge will lower the accident vehicle speed when wind speed reaches a certain level.