Running safety and seismic optimization of a fault-crossing simply-supported girder bridge for high-speed railways based on a train-track-bridge coupling system

Bridges crossing active faults are more likely to suffer serious damage or even collapse due to the wreck capabilities of near-fault pulses and surface ruptures under earthquakes.Taking a high-speed railway simply-supported girder bridge with eight spans crossing an active strike-slip fault as the research object,a refined coupling dynamic model of the high-speed train-CRTS III slab ballastless track-bridge system was established based on ABAQUS.The rationality of the established model was thoroughly discussed.The horizontal ground motions in a fault rupture zone were simulated and transient dynamic analyses of the high-speed train-track-bridge coupling system under 3-dimensional seismic excitations were subsequently performed.The safe running speed limits of a high-speed train under different earthquake levels(frequent occurrence,design and rare occurrence)were assessed based on wheel-rail dynamic(lateral wheel-rail force,derailment coefficient and wheel-load reduction rate)and rail deformation(rail dislocation,parallel turning angle and turning angle)indicators.Parameter optimization was then investigated in terms of the rail fastener stiffness and isolation layer friction coefficient.Results of the wheel-rail dynamic indicators demonstrate the safe running speed limits for the high-speed train to be approximately 200 km/h and 80 km/h under frequent and design earthquakes,while the train is unable to run safely under rare earthquakes.In addition,the rail deformations under frequent,design and rare earthquakes meet the safe running requirements of the high-speed train for the speeds of 250,100 and 50 km/h,respectively.The speed limits determined for the wheel-rail dynamic indicators are lower due to the complex coupling effect of the train-track-bridge system under track irregularity.The running safety of the train was improved by increasing the fastener stiffness and isolation layer friction coefficient.At the rail fastener lateral stiffness of 60 kN/mm and isolation layer friction coefficients of 0.9 and 0.8,respectively,the safe running speed limits of the high-speed train increased to 250 km/h and 100 km/h under frequent and design earthquakes,respectively.

A co-simulation method for the train-track-bridge interaction analysis under earthquake using Simpack and OpenSees

Under high-level earthquakes,bridge piers and bearings are prone to be damaged and the elastoplastic state of bridge structural components is easily accessible in the train-track-bridge interaction(TTBI)system.Considering the complexity and structural non-linearity of the TTBI system under earthquakes,a single software is not adequate for the coupling analysis.Therefore,in this paper,an interactive method for the TTBI system is proposed by combining the multi-body dynamics software Simpack and the seismic simulation software OpenSees based on the Client-Server architecture,which takes full advantages of the powerful wheel-track contact analysis capabilities of Simpack and the sophisticated nonlinear analysis capabilities of OpenSees.Based on the proposed Simpack and OpenSees co-simulating train-track-bridge(SOTTB)method,a single-span bridge analysis under the earthquake was conducted and the accuracy of co-simulation method was verified by comparing it with results of the finite element model.Finally,the TTBI model is built utilizing the SOTTB method to further discuss the running safety of HST on multi-span simply supported bridges under earthquakes.The results show that the SOTTB method has the advantages of usability,high versatility and accuracy which can be further used to study the running safety of HST under earthquakes with high intensities.

Safety threshold of high-speed railway pier settlement based on train-track-bridge dynamic interaction

This paper presents a method to determine the safety threshold of bridge pier settlement in high-speed railways.An analytical expression of the mapping relationship between the pier settlement and the rail deformation is derived theoretically for the double block ballastless track-bridge system.By adopting the superposition of the track random irregularity and the rail deformation caused by the pier settlement as the excitation inputs,the variations of vehicle dynamics indices with pier settlement are comparatively analyzed.Then,the safety threshold of the bridge pier settlement is obtained according to the limit of vehicle running safety and ride comfort indices of the high-speed trains.Results show that the dynamics indices of different trains have different sensitivities to the pier settlement,and the train CRH2C is the most sensitive one among all the types of Chinese high-speed trains.When passing through the bridges in common span with pier settlement at the speed of 250–350 km/h,the trains suffer the low-frequency excitations,and the vertical acceleration of car body is most sensitive to the pier settlement of all the dynamics indices.When the car body vertical acceleration just exceeds the allowable limit,the critical settlement value is 23.4 mm,which is much bigger than the pier differential settlement limit in the current code for Chinese high-speed railways.

Introduction to the New Editor-in-Chief

Professor Wanming Zhai has been appointed as the new Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Modern Transportation(JMT)and has begun his term from January 2019.Professor Zhai succeeds Professor Yong Zhao who has served as Editor-in-Chief of JMT since 2011.Professor Zhai is well known for his contributions to theories of railway engineering dynamics.He developed a framework of vehicle-track coupled dynamics and a method for analyzing and assessing the running safety of high-speed trains passing through bridges based on train-track-bridge dynamic interactions,both of which have been widely cited and successfully applied to more than 20 large-scale field engineering projects for the railway network in China,mostly for high-speed railways.