Novel Virtual Simply Supported Beam Method for Detecting the Speed and Axles of Moving Vehicles on Bridges

One of the major drawbacks with most bridge weigh-in-motion (BWIM) methods that adopt the Moses algorithm is the need for acquisition of vehicle speed and axle spacing by using additional devices, such as free-of-axle detectors. This study presents a novel virtual simply supported beam (VSSB) method, which uses weighing sensors to directly identify the speed and the axle spacing of passing vehicles on bridges, making it very desirable for commercial BWIM systems. Numerical simulations and model tests are carried out to study the effectiveness and accuracy of the proposed method. The results show that the proposed method can successfully identify the vehicle speed and axle spacing with good accuracy. The proposed method also proves reliable under noisy conditions.