Speaker
Description
Seasonal temperature variability, particularly freezing events in cold climate, significantly impacts the dynamic behavior of bridge structures. Freezing temperatures can alter material properties, especially stiffness and elasticity, causing notable changes structural dynamic responses, such as modal frequencies. Such temperature-induced stiffness variations can result in shifts in such responses, potentially masking or mimicking abnormal changes in bridges due to structural damages. Therefore, it is essential to study the impacts of cold climate and freezing events on structural dynamic responses. This paper conducts a numerical investigation to presents modal analysis results of a finite element model of a real-world bridge structure subjected to freezing events. Empirical functions are defined to simulate the variability in the elastic modulus of steel and concrete, capturing the influence of seasonal temperature fluctuations, with a particular focus on freezing scenarios. This finite element modeling is developed in the MATLAB environment, and the simulation results exhibit strong agreement with observed modal parameter variations in real bridge structures. These findings underscore the importance of accounting for temperature effects in structural health monitoring to avoid false positives or undetected damage in cold regions.
