Drive-by blind modal identification with singular spectrum analysis

Drive-by bridge parameter identification has been an active research area in recent years. An instrumented vehicle passing over a bridge deck captures dynamic information of the bridge structure without bridge closure and on-site instrumentation. The vehicle dynamic response includes components associated with the bridge surface roughness and the vehicle and bridge vibration. It is a challenge to separate these components and extract the bridge modal parameters from the vehicle response. A novel drive-by blind modal identification with singular spectrum analysis is proposed to extract the bridge modal frequencies from the vehicle dynamic response. The single-channel measured vehicular response is decomposed into a multichannel data set using singular spectrum analysis, and the bridge frequencies are then extracted via the blind modal identification. Numerical results showed that the proposed method is effective and robust to extract the bridge frequencies from the vehicle response measurement even with Class B road surface roughness. The effects of the moving speed and the vehicle parameters on the identification were studied. A vehicle-bridge interaction model in the laboratory was studied to further verify the proposed method using one- and two-axle vehicles.