Analytical and experimental study of a skew bridge model

This paper describes an experimental study of a skew bridge model conducted at the Federal Highway Administration Turner-Fairbank Highway Research Center. The objectives of the experiment are: (1) to perform a pilot study on the design, construction, instrumentation, testing and data processing of a skew bridge model, (2) to provide experimental data to validate a 3D finite element model developed for the skew bridge, and (3) to confirm the applicability of a simplified bridge model (the dual-beam stick model) developed for the dynamic analysis of skew bridges. Details of the design, construction, instrumentation, testing and data processing of the model bridge are described. Results for static displacements, natural frequencies, mode shapes and damping of the model bridge will be presented. A comparison of the results obtained from these tests with those obtained numerically from a finite element analysis and analytically from the dual stick bridge model shows that good correlation is obtained.