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A Practical Method to Determine Influence Surfaces using Commercial

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Article · January 2007

DOI: 10.1007/978-3-540-75999-7_82

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 A Practical Method to Determine Critical Moments Using
Influence Surfaces and Spreadsheets

Jackson Kong

Division of Building Science and Technology, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, China

Abstract: In this paper, a simple yet practical method is presented for the determination of critical bending
moments of bridge decks subject to traffic loads by using influence surfaces and simple computing tools.
By means of commercial finite element software, the influence surface is first obtained automatically by put-
ting unit loads across the region concerned, and corresponding results are exported to spreadsheets. A
least square fit to the classical thin-plate solutions, based on the computed results, is subsequently deter-
mined. Based on the least-square fit solution, the exact location of the designed vehicle load and the corre-
sponding critical moments can be obtained using simple and readily available optimization tools in Excel.
The principle behind the approach is only based on the least-square approach and the thin-plate theory. The
method does not involve any complicated mathematics or special software and all computations can be eas-
ily done on a spreadsheet tool like Excel, thus facilitating engineers to implement the method in practice.

Key words: influence surfaces, critical moments, bridge decks, Excel, spreadsheets.

cal stress can be found by simply placing the designed

Introduction load repeatedly on various positions of the chart, and
by comparing the results, an approximate optimum
Structures are subject to dead load and live load;
value can be easily found. The method is simple and
the latter refers to loads which would act on various
has the advantage that the chart can be applied for dif-
possible positions. It is very often necessary for prac-
ferent types of designed loads. However, it suffers
ticing structural engineers to determine how
from the drawback that such influence surface charts
stresses/deformation at some critical locations of the
are readily available only at a limited number of loca-
structures would vary according to the positions of live
tions for uniform plates with simple boundary condi-
loads. For simple structures and simple loadings, engi-
tions and geometries[1-2]. As such, the method has very
neers could easily assign live loads to positions that
limited applications, or otherwise simplifications and
would generate the most critical stress components
assumptions are necessary to be made in order to apply
concerned at the critical locations of the structure,
these influence surface charts to practical structures.
based on experience. For complicated structures like a
2) the designed load is repeatedly placed on vari-
bridge deck under traffic loads or similar plate-type
ous locations of the structure and the corresponding re-
structures however such a determination is not always
sults are computed by commercial finite element soft-
obvious, and two common approaches are usually
ware. Critical stresses can be found from the envelope
adopted by practicing engineers in order to obtain the
of the computer results. Despite the simplicity and ver-
critical stress components concerned, namely:
satility of this approach, the accuracy of the critical
1) a manual method by using influence lines
values so obtained depends on the range of the posi-
and/or influence surface charts available in the litera-
tions of designed load being used in the computation
ture and simple numerical integration tools. The criti-
and the fineness of the mesh used. In case only a lim-
ited number of positions are considered with a rela-
tively coarse mesh, the critical values so obtained may
not be close to the true optimum. On the other hand, a
lot of computations and data processing are necessary
should a wide range of designed load positions are
used with a fine mesh. The method becomes very tedi-
ous in practice, particularly when several designed
loads need to be taken into consideration.
In this paper, a simple yet practical and direct me-
thod is presented for the determination of critical bend-
ing moments of bridge decks subject to traffic loads by
using influence surfaces generated from commercial
FE software. The influence surfaces are obtained by
putting unit loads across the region concerned and the
corresponding computed results are exported to a
spreadsheet. A least square fit to the classical thin-plate
solution, based on the computed results can be easily
obtained. Based on such a least-square solution, the lo-
cations and the corresponding critical moments for dif-
ferent types of designed loads can be calculated ex-
actly by using a simple and readily available optimiza-
tion tools in Excel. Comparing with the two aforesaid
common approaches, the method is simple, versatile
and reliable, and it does not require any complicated
mathematics or special software for practicing engi-
neers to implement.
1 Problem Description
1.1 Influence surfaces
Several general approaches have been proposed in the
literature to determine influence surfaces. In particular,
a simple method of equivalent loads [3-6], based on the
reciprocal theorem of linear elastic systems, could be
used to directly determine influence surfaces. The me-
thod is versatile and computationally more effective
than the conventional “unit-load” method, but its ap-
plications, unfortunately, involves the explicit form of
the strain-displacement functions of the finite elements
used, which, for many commercial software, are usu-
ally not known to practicing engineers, thus hindering
its wide applications in practice. A recent literature
survey of methods for obtaining influence lines and/or
influence surfaces are summarized in [6]. In this study,
the conventional unit-load method is used.
As a vehicle to illustrate the concept and procedure of
the method proposed in this study, only a rectangular
plate with two opposite edges free and the remaining
edges free is considered (see Figure 1). Influence sur-
faces are directly generated using commercial FE
software; assuming that a unit load is applied succes-
sively to each of the n nodal points of the mesh, the
corresponding influence surface of nodal stress, M0,
at a specified nodal point of the plate can be computed
and represented by a column vector {M0fem } with n
entries. This computed influence surface can be veri-
fied against influence surface charts available in the li-
terature[1].
1.2 Designed loads
Suppose that the plate is subject to a designed vehicle
with four square wheel loads separated apart as shown
in Figure 2. Assuming that the critical bending moment
at the center of the plate and the corresponding loca-
tion of the vehicle is to be determined, this practical
problem can be formulated as:
Maximize Mx0 (xc,yc) (1)
where (xc,yc) is the center of designed vehicle, and Mx0
is the bending moment along x at the center of the
plate, subject to the constraints that the vehicle shall
travel within the physical boundary of the plate:
(xL,yL) < (xc, yc) < (xU,yU). (2)
2 The proposed method
2.1 Classical thin-plate bending solutions[7]
For a thin plate subject to a unit point load at (xi,yi), the
solution of the governing equation of plate bending can
be written as the summation of a singular part and a
non-singular part, i.e.,
w(x,y)=βr2 ln r /πD+ non-singular part (3)
where the singularity of the solution is attributed to the
logarithmic function. (The singular distribution of
bending moment Mx in the plate due to a unit load at
the center is shown in Figure 3). β is a parameter to be
determined. The non-singular part of the solution is de-
termined by boundary conditions imposed. D denotes
the bending stiffness of the plate and r represents the
distance of a generic point (x,y) from the loaded posi-
tion:

r = √((x-xi)2 + (y-yi)2) (4)

Bending moments Mx, My and Mxy can be written in

terms of the deflection and its derivatives:

∂2w ∂2w ∂2w ∂2w

Mx = D ( + υ ) ; M y = D ( + υ )
∂x 2 ∂y 2 ∂y 2 ∂x 2
∂2w
Mxy = D(1-υ ( ))
2
(5)
∂x∂y

2.2 Least-square fit to FE computed influence sur-

face
Fig. 1 SAP model for a square plate with two opposite
Using equations (3) to (5), the bending moment influ- edges clamped and the other two free.
ence surface for Mx at a generic point (x,y) due to a
unit load at (xi ,yi) can be written as:

M x ( x, y; xi , yi )
∂ 2 (r 2 ln r ) ∂ 2 (r 2 ln r )
= β( + ν ) + P( xi , yi )
∂x 2 ∂y 2
= βWP + P( xi , yi )
(6)
in which the derivatives of the singular function WP( x,
y ; xi , yi ) can be easily worked out manually or using
Matlab.
In this study, the non-singular part in (6) is approxi-
mated as a polynomial function of order n. A complete
polynomial of order 7 is adopted, that is,

P(xi,yi)≈[1, xi, yi, xi2, xiyi, yi2,.......yi7]{α}

=[P1(xi,yi),P2(xi,yi),P3(xi,yi),…,P36(xi,yi)] {α}
(7) Fig. 2 A designed vehicle with four square wheel
loads separated by distances a and b apart. The center
where {α} is a column vector consisting of the corre-
of each wheel is at a/2 and b/2 from the center of the
sponding 36 parameters to be determined. Together
vehicle xc,, yc . Each wheel load is treated as a patch
with β, a total of 37 parameters need to be found. Pa- UDL.
rameters
β and {α} are then determined by enforcing that the
sum of the square of the difference between the mo-
ments calculated from (6) and (7) and those obtained
from the finite element software is minimum, that is,

Minimize ({Mx0fem } – {Mx0s})T({Mx0fem } – {Mx0s}) (8)

where {Mx0fem } is the column vector with n entries of 2.3 Moment due to patch loads
the computed FE bending moment at the center of the
For a uniformly distributed wheel load w of area hxh,
plate due to a unit load placed successively at each of
the bending moment at the center of the plate can be
the n nodes. {Mx0s} comprises the center bending
found by integrating (13), that is:
moment calculated from (6) and (7) due to a unit load
applied at each of the n-1 nodal points, except the cen- x+h y+h
ter of the plate, which moment cannot be calculated ∂ 2 (r 2 ln r ) ∂ 2 (r 2 ln r )
from (6) due to the singularity of WP thereat. As such,
Mx0 = ∫ ∫
x y
(β (
∂x 2
+ ν
∂y 2
)+
the column vector {Mx0s} can be written as: [P(xi ,yi )]{α}) dxi dyi (14)

⎧MXS 0 (x1, y1) ⎫ ⎡WP (x0 , y0 ; x1, y1) P1(x1, y1) P2 (x1, y1) .... P36(x1, y1) 0⎤⎧ β ⎫
⎪ ⎪ ⎢ ⎪ in which the closed form expression for the integral
⎪⎪ ... ⎪ ⎢ .... 0⎥⎥⎪⎪ α1 ⎪
⎪ ⎪ ⎪ is found using Matlab. The location of each wheel load
⎨MX0 (x0 , y0 )⎬ = ⎢ 0 1⎥⎨ ⎬
S
0 0 0 ...
⎪ ... ⎪ ⎢ ...
⎥
0⎥⎪ α36 ⎪
is defined by the center of the vehicle and the given
⎪ ⎪ ⎢ ⎪ ⎪
⎢ ... P36(xn , yn ) 0⎥⎦⎪⎩MXS 0 ⎭⎪ seperation of the wheel loads. The total bending mo-
⎩⎪MX0 (xn , yn )⎭⎪ ⎣WP (x0 , y0; xn , yn ) P1(xn , yn ) P2 (xn , yn )
S

ment due to the designed vehicle is then given by:

Î {Mx0s} = [N]{γ} (9) Mx0 (xc,yc) = ∑M x0

numberofwheels
(15)

where (x0,y0) is the center of the plate.

Substituting (9) into (8) gives:

({Mx0fem } –[N]{γ})T({Mx0fem } –[N]{γ})

={Mx0fem }T {Mx0fem } +{γ}T [N]T [N]{γ}- {γ}T[N]T

{Mx0fem }-{Mx0fem }T[N]{γ} (10)

Differentiating (10) with respect to {γ} gives:

([N]T [N]) {γ}=[N]T {Mx0fem } (11)

Solving for {γ} gives:

{γ}=[K]-1 {f} (12)

where [K]=[N]T [N] is a square matrix of size 38 and

its inverse can be easily computed using Excel. {f}=
[N]T {Mx0fem } is a column vector of the same length. Fig. 3 Singularity of bending moment Mx in the plate
due to a unit load at the center.
The bending moment at the center of the plate due to a
an unit load at (xi,yi) is then given by:

∂ 2 (r 2 ln r ) ∂ 2 (r 2 ln r )
β( + ν ) + [P(xi ,yi )]{α}
∂x 2 ∂y 2
(13)
2.4 Optimization using Excel
Once the closed form expression of (14) is obtained, the
optimization problem as defined by equations (1) and (2)
method is implemented on Excel using its built-in func-
tion “Solver”. (It is part of a suite of commands some-
times called what-if analysis : A process of changing the
values in cells to see how those changes affect the out-
come of formulas on the worksheet). With Solver, engi-
neers can find an optimal value of Mx0 (xc,yc), i.e. equa-
tion (1), with constraints applied to the “design” variables
(xc,yc) i.e. equation (2) to restrict the values. The General-
ized Reduced Gradient (GRG2) nonlinear optimization
method is used in “Solver”. A screen dump from the Ex-
cel file is given in Figure 4.
3 Numerical Examples
Numerical examples of square plates with various bound-
ary conditions and bridge decks of box girders, slab-on-
girders have been studied using the proposed method. It is
found that, depending on the separation of the wheel
loads and the size of the wheels, the critical locations of
the vehicle that generate the optimal bending moment at
various locations can be easily estimated. Due to the lim-
ited scope of the paper, details of numerical results will
be presented in the Conference and reported elsewhere
[8].
tion, London, 1961.
[3] Ren H.L., Yeo J S, Shu L. Influence function of thin plates
using finite strips: computational method and applications.
Journal of Jianghan Petroleum Institute, 2000, 22(1), 56-58.
(in Chinese)
[4] Liu S H, Wu H Q. A method to calculate influence function
of member structure inner forces. Journal of Lanzhou Jiao-
tong University (Natural Sciences), 2004, 23(1), 1-5. (in
Chinese)
[5] Shen W. The generalized Muller-Breslau principle for high-
er-order elements. Computers and Structures, 1992, 44,
207-212.
[6] Orakdogan E., Girgin K.M. A Direct determination of in-
fluence lines and surfaces by FEM. Structural Engineering
and Mechanics, 2005, 20(3), 279-292.
[7] Timsoshenko S. Theory of Plates and Shells. McGraw-Hill,
New York. 1959.
[8] Kong J. A Practical method to determine critical moments
in bridge decks using influence surfaces and spreadsheets
(submitted to Computers & Structures)
5 Acknowledgement
The work described in this paper was partially supported by
a grant from City University of Hong Kong (Project No.
7001774).

4 Conclusions and Future Work

Details of a method for obtaining critical bending mo-
ments in bridge decks or similar plate-type structures is
presented. The method is conceptually simple, and easy
to implement in practice. It does not involve any compli-
cated mathematics or special software. All calculations
can be done on Excel. Although the method is presented
only for plate-type structures, it can be applied to other
types of structures, provided that appropriate approximate
functions can be found. A sample code of implementation
on Excel could be obtained from the author upon request
for further applications and modifications.

References

[1] Pucher Adolf. Influence surfaces of Elastic Plates. Sprin-

ger-Verlag, New York, 1977.
[2] Rusch Hubert and Hergenroder Arnfrid. Influence surfaces
for moments in skew slabs. Cement and Concrete Associa-
 Fig. 4 A partial screen dump from the Excelspreadsheet.

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