Nonlinear boundary parameter identification of bridges based on temperature-induced strains

Temperature-induced responses, such as strains and displacements, are related to the boundary conditions. Therefore, it is required to determine the boundary conditions to establish a reliable bridge model for temperature-induced responses analysis. Particularly, bridge bearings usually present nonlinear behavior with an increase in load, and the nonlinear boundary conditions cause significant effect on temperature-induced responses. In this paper, the bridge nonlinear boundary conditions were simulated as bilinear translational or rotational springs, and the boundary parameters of the bilinear springs were identified based on the measured temperature-induced responses. First of all, the temperature-induced responses of a simply support beam with nonlinear translational and rotational springs subjected to various temperature loads were analyzed. The simulated temperature-induced strains and displacements were assumed as measured data. To identify the nonlinear translational and rotational boundary parameters of the bridge, the objective function based on the temperature-induced responses is then created, and the nonlinear boundary parameters were further identified by using the nonlinear least squares optimization algorithm. Then, a beam structure with nonlinear translational and rotational springs was simulated as a numerical example, and the nonlinear boundary parameters were identified based on the proposed method. The numerical results show that the proposed method can effectively identify the parameters of the nonlinear boundary conditions. Finally, the boundary parameters of a real arch bridge were identified based on the measured strain data and the proposed method. Since the bearings of the real bridge do not perform nonlinear behavior, only the linear boundary parameters of the bridge model were identified. Based on the bridge model and the identified boundary conditions, the temperature-induced strains were recalculated to compare with the measured strain data. The recalculated temperature-induced strains are in a good agreement with the real measured data.