Modal analysis of free vibration of an extremely lightweight panel model for bridge bearing applications

This paper reports a novel extremely lightweight panel model under free vibration. This novel model is likely to be used for railway/highway bridge bearing applications due to its high performance to weight ratio, which offers superior mechanical properties, such as sound and vibration attenuation, rigidity, and energy absorption. The structure of the model is based on triply periodic minimal surfaces (TPMS) conceived by observing the scales of butterflies’ wings. The vibration behaviours of this novel panel model used as bridge bearings are not well-known and have never been fully investigated under free vibration. It is important to comprehend the free vibration behaviours of the model and to identify its dynamic modal parameters. In term of modelling, a TPMS sandwich panel finite element (FE) model and a typical bridge bearing FE model under free vibration for bridge bearing applications are designed and examined with a computational method. In general, FEA predictions of the free vibration behaviours of the novel panel model compared to a conventional bridge bearing model provide very good results. These results can be implemented to better generate design standards of extremely lightweight sandwich structures under different vibrations for bridge bearing applications in the near future.