Disk model for wheels moving over highway bridges with rough surfaces

In most previous analyses of vehicle–bridge interaction (VBI) problems in highways involving surface roughness, the wheels of vehicles have been treated as points, referred to as the point model, and the tracks as a series of hills and valleys. The point model is unrealistic for wheels, as they are of finite size and cannot touch the bottom of valleys. In this study, each wheel will be modeled instead as a rigid disk of finite size, referred to as the disk model, neglecting the tire deformations. The VBI element will be modified accordingly for computing the vehicle and bridge responses. Numerical examples are prepared to illustrate the effect of wheel size on the dynamic responses of the bridge and passing vehicles. It is concluded that the point model tends to introduce some unrealistic high-frequency vibrations on the system responses, while underestimating the amplitude of vehicle frequency in the vehicle response. The disk model should be adopted, if the velocity and acceleration responses of the bridge and the dynamic responses of the moving vehicle are of major concern.