Over the past decades, there has been continual construction of sea-crossing bridges as the technology of transportation improves. The probability of bridge pier being subjected to more vehicular impact is also growing. This study performed scale model tests and analyzed a collision mechanism considering the non-navigable span of a sea-crossing bridge in East China Sea as an engineering background. Comparing the test results with the finite element calculations, the dynamic response of the sample bridge and local damages of the fragile components under impact force were evaluated. Subsequently, the time-frequency characteristics of the vibration signal were analyzed based on wavelet packet analysis, and the multi-resolution characteristics as well as energy distribution of the vibration signal were discussed. It was observed that the impact energy transferred from ship to pier during the period of collision distributed different frequency bands with varying characteristics. The main frequency band(0–62.5 Hz) contains more than 75% of the vibration energy. The analysis can provide a basis for structural damage identification after the collision and anti-collision design of bridges.
