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Summary: Bridge influence surface is an important tool to study the bridge responses under the moving loads, which contains tremendous structural information. The structural deterioration during the service life would induce the variation of the bridge influence surface, which makes it essential to identify the influence surface exactly from the field measured data under moving vehicle loads. This paper firstly summarizes current development of bridge influence surface identification methods and classifies the methods in which the vehicle is respectively equivalent to line loads and concentrated loads. After that, the actual spatial distribution of the vehicle load is considered, based on which a new identification method is presented to solve the boundary problem of current influence surface identification methods. Then a numerical slab model with two fixed ends is illustrated to prove the validity of the method, and the accuracy and identifiable region of different methods in this condition are compared with the other methods. Influence factors of identification accuracy including noise level, axle number of vehicle and loading point are analyzed. Finally, laboratory verification using the same slab model is prepared to verify the effectiveness of the proposed identification method. Results of this study provide an effective identification method of bridge influence surface with very high identification accuracy, which can be used to full bridge influence surface test. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The bridge influence line can reflect the structural behavior under moving vehicle loads, which is becoming a proposing tool to study the bridge behavior during service life. A high‐speed vehicle will induce dynamic effect on the bridge, which will significantly change the shape of response curve. It is essential to consider the dynamic response for the accurate identification of the bridge influence line. This paper firstly summarizes current research activities for bridge influence line identification and components of the bridge dynamic responses. A dynamic fluctuation part elimination method based on empirical mode decomposition is proposed, based on which the bridge static influence line is identified by static bridge influence line identification method. Finally, a vehicle–bridge coupling model of a simply supported beam excited by passing vehicles with three different speeds is introduced to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed identification method. The result of this study provides an effective identification method of the bridge static influence line, which can lead to a satisfactory identification results based on the dynamic responses induced by high‐speed vehicle loads. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]