A discussion about the limitations of the Eurocode’s high-speed load model for railway bridges

High-speed railway bridges are subjected to normative limitations concerning maximum permissible deck accelerations.For the design of these structures,the European norm EN 1991-2 introduces the high-speed load model(HSLM)—a set of point loads intended to include the effects of existing high-speed trains.Yet,the evolution of current trains and the recent development of new load models motivate a discussion regarding the limits of validity of the HSLM.For this study,a large number of randomly generated load models of articulated,conventional,and regular trains are tested and compared with the envelope of HSLM effects.For each type of train,two sets of 100,000 load models are considered:one abiding by the limits of the EN 1991-2 and another considering wider limits.This comparison is achieved using both a bridge-independent metric(train signatures)and dynamic analyses on a case study bridge(the Canelas bridge of the Portuguese Railway Network).For the latter,a methodology to decrease the computational cost of moving loads analysis is introduced.Results show that some theoretical load models constructed within the stipulated limits of the norm can lead to effects not covered by the HSLM.This is especially noted in conventional trains,where there is a relation with larger distances between centres of adjacent vehicle bogies.

Deformation monitoring of long-span railway bridges based on SBAS-InSAR technology

The deformation monitoring of long-span railway bridges is significant to ensure the safety of human life and property.The interferometric synthetic aperture radar(In SAR)technology has the advantage of high accuracy in bridge deformation monitoring.This study monitored the deformation of the Ganjiang Super Bridge based on the small baseline subsets(SBAS)In SAR technology and Sentinel-1A data.We analyzed the deformation results combined with bridge structure,temperature,and riverbed sediment scouring.The results are as follows:(1)The Ganjiang Super Bridge area is stable overall,with deformation rates ranging from-15.6 mm/yr to 10.7 mm/yr(2)The settlement of the Ganjiang Super Bridge deck gradually increases from the bridge tower toward the main span,which conforms to the typical deformation pattern of a cable-stayed bridge.(3)The sediment scouring from the riverbed cause the serious settlement on the bridge’s east side compared with that on the west side.(4)The bridge deformation negatively correlates with temperature,with a faster settlement at a higher temperature and a slow rebound trend at a lower temperature.The study findings can provide scientific data support for the health monitoring of long-span railway bridges.

Influence of pier height on the safety of trains running on high-speed railway bridges during earthquakes

Sudden earthquakes pose a threat to the running safety of trains on high-speed railway bridges,and the stiffness of piers is one of the factors affecting the dynamic response of train-track-bridge system.In this paper,a experiment of a train running on a high-speed railway bridge is performed based on a dynamic experiment system,and the corresponding numerical model is established.The reliability of the numerical model is verified by experiments.Then,the experiment and numerical data are analyzed to reveal the pier height effects on the running safety of trains on bridges.The results show that when the pier height changes,the frequency of the bridge below the 30 m pier height changes greater;the increase of pier height causes the transverse fundamental frequency of the bridge close to that of the train,and the shaking angle and lateral displacement of the train are the largest for bridge with 50 m pier,which increases the risk of derailment;with the pier height increases from 8 m to 50 m,the derailment coefficient obtained by numerical simulations increases by 75% on average,and the spectral intensity obtained by experiments increases by 120% on average,two indicators exhibit logarithmic variation.

A linear crack length measurement method for railway bridges based on calibration points fitting

For the linear crack skeleton of railway bridges with irregular strike,it is difficult to accurately express the crack contour feature by using a single smoothing fitting algorithm.In order to improve the measurement accuracy,a polynomial curve fitting was proposed,which used the calibration point of crack contour as the boundary point,and then put them all together to produce a continuous contour curve to achieve the crack length measurement.The method was tested by measuring the linar cracks with different shapes.It is shown that this proposed algorithm can not only solve the jagged problem generated in the crack skeleton extraction process,but also improve the crack length measurement accuracy.The relative deviation is less than 0.15,and the measurement accuracy is over 98.05%,which provides a more effective means for the crack length measurement in railway bridges.

Safety and Applicability Evaluation of Railway Bridges in China

There are more than eight different design standards in use for the existing railway bridges in China, which have different applicabilities for bridges built in different periods. In this paper, the design load standards in different periods are introduced and compared; The working status of the railway is investigated. According to the developing trend of separating passenger and freight transports, by comparing the computed results of the bridge effect and the fatigue cumulative damage, the applicabilities of bearing capacity and fatigue are analyzed for existing bridges. The results indicate that the bearing capacities of 99% existing bridges are suitable for the demand of 26.5 t （axle-weight） freight trains. However, for culverts, bridges with spans less than 20 m, longitudinal and transverse beams of through bridges, suspenders of truss bridges and other locally-stressed members should be evaluated and reinforced due to the increasing axle-weight.

Over-height truck collisions with railway bridges:attenuation of damage using crash beams

Railway bridges are susceptible to over-height truck collisions and to address this issue,it is necessary to attenuate the effect of these impacts to ensure the safety of transportation operations.This study experimentally investigates the effectiveness of crash beams as a cushioning mechanism for railway bridges against collisions.Over-height truck and railway bridge impact events were simulated in a 1:5 scale experiment.The design parameters such as the stiffness of the crash beam and the bridge supports were scaled to evaluate different levels of attenuation.Seventeen experiments were conducted with five configurations consisting of four different types of crash beams and one no-crash beam arrangement.The results show that crash beams attenuate bridge total peak dynamic displacement responses between 14.5%and 35.7%,depending on the intensity of the impact and crash beam type.In addition,the results show that the average effectiveness in attenuating residual deformation for all four crash beams ranges from 43.03%to 83.40%.Finally,various designs and their effectiveness against lateral impacts with different speeds are discussed.The overall scope of this research is to provide objective information about the design of crash beams for railway bridges based on their response to over-height truck collisions at various speeds.

Study on the shock absorbing technique of high speed railway bridges

Based on the idea of "bearing function separation", a structural member called shock absorber that makes use of its plastic deformation is presented for reducing the seismic response of the bridge. The design criterion for matching material stress, strain and earthquake fortification aim, is also given. The analysis results show that the high speed railway box girder with the absorber in this paper has great reduction effect in seismic response of the bridge piers.

Experimental investigation of damage identification for continuous railway bridges

Considering the issue of misjudgment in railway bridge damage identification, a method combining the step- by-step damage detection method with the statistical pattern recognition is proposed to detect the structural damage of a railway continuous girder bridge. The whole process of damage identification is divided into three identification sub- steps, namely, damage early warning, damage location, and damage extent identification. The multi-class pattern clas- sification algorithm of C-support vector machine and the regression algorithm of c-support vector machine are engagedto identify the damage location and damage extent, respectively. For verifying the proposed method, both of the pro- posed method and the optimization method are used to deal with the measured data obtained from a specific railway continuous girder model bridge. The results show that the proposed method can not only identify the damage location correctly, but also obtain the damage extent which is consistent with the experimental results accurately. By uncou- pling finite element analysis and damage identification, normalizing the index, and seeking the separation hyper plane with maximum margin, the proposed method has more favorable advantages in generalization and anti-noise. As a re- sult, it has the ability to identify the damage location and extent, and can be applied to the damage identification in real bridge structures.

Field survey and analysis on near-fault severely damaged high-speed railway bridge in 2022 M6.9 Menyuan earthquake

The 2022 M6.9 Menyuan earthquake caused severe damage to a high-speed railway bridge,which was designed for high-speed trains running at speeds of above 250 km/h and is located right next to the fault.Bridges of this type have been widely used for rapidly constructing the high-speed railway network,but few bridges have been tested by near-fault devastating earthquakes.The potential severe impact of the earthquake on the high-speed railway is not only the safety of the infrastructure,trains and passengers,but also economic loss due to interrupted railway use.Therefore,a field survey was carried out immediately after the earthquake to collect time-sensitive data.The damage to the bridge was carefully investigated,and quantitative analyses were conducted to better understand the mechanism of the bridge failure.It was found that seismic action perpendicular to the bridge’s longitudinal direction caused severe damage to the girders and rails,while none of the piers showed obvious deformation or cracking.The maximum values of transverse displacement,out-of-plane rotation and twisting angle of girders reached 212.6 cm,3.1 degrees and 19.9 degrees,respectively,causing severe damage to the bearing supports and anti-seismic retaining blocks.These observations provide a basis for improving the seismic design of high-speed railway bridges located in near-fault areas.

Static Load Test Detection of Continuous Rigid- Frame Railway Bridge

The quality of the continuous rigid-frame railway bridge is related to the safety of train operation,so it is necessary to test its stiffness,strength,and other indicators.Static load test is a common technique for bridge inspection.This article summarizes the purpose of the static load test for a continuous rigid-frame railway bridge,including the required equipment,operation methods,etc.,and lists examples to analyze the operation process and precautions of static load test,hoping to provide reference information for relevant personnel.

Near-source topographic effect on seismic responses of a multi-span continuous railway bridge crossing a symmetrical V-shaped canyon

Past earthquakes have revealed that topographic features have significant impacts on the characteristics of ground motions,which may cause the amplification and de-amplification of input seismic waves.The topographic effect with the assumption of plane seismic waves on the seismic responses of bridges has been investigated in the existing literature;however,the influence of near-source topographic effects has not been thoroughly understood.The objective of this study is to numerically explore the near-source topographic effects on the seismic behaviors of an existing railway bridge crossing a symmetrical V-shaped canyon.The influence of the source of incident waves is estimated.Numerical results demonstrate that the topographic effects can noticeably amplify the seismic responses of the bridge.Compared to the bridge without crossing a canyon,the peak displacements of the girder,pier,and bearing in the case of the canyon crossing bridge increase by 15.2%,2.9%−14.5%,and 24.2%−229.6%,respectively.The piers at the illuminated side of the canyon experience larger seismic responses compared to the piers at the shaded side of the canyon due to the unequal motion amplitudes at each support.As the source-to-canyon distance increases,the seismic responses of the piers show an increasing trend.

Dynamic response limit of high-speed railway bridge under earthquake considering running safety performance of train

Due to the wide railway network and different characteristics of many earthquake zones in China,considering the running safety performance of trains(RSPT)in the design of high-speed railway bridge structures is very necessary.In this study,in order to provide the seismic design and evaluation measure of the bridge structure based on the RSPT,a calculation model of RSPT on bridge under earthquake was established,and the track surface response measure when the derailment coefficient reaches the limit value was calculated by referring to 15 commonly used ground motion(GM)intensity measures.Based on the coefficient of variation of the limit value obtained from multiple GM samples,the optimal measures were selected.Finally,the limit value of bridge seismic response based on RSPT with different train speeds and structural periods was determined.

Near-fault directivity pulse-like ground motion effect on high-speed railway bridge

The vehicle-track-bridge(VTB)element was used to investigate how a high-speed railway bridge reacted when it was subjected to near-fault directivity pulse-like ground motions.Based on the PEER NAG Strong Ground Motion Database,the spatial analysis model of a vehicle-bridge system was developed,the VTB element was derived to simulate the interaction of train and bridge,and the elasto-plastic seismic responses of the bridge were calculated.The calculation results show that girder and pier top displacement,and bending moment of the pier base increase subjected to near-fault directivity pulse-like ground motion compared to far-field earthquakes,and the greater deformation responses in near-fault shaking are associated with fewer reversed cycles of loading.The hysteretic characteristics of the pier subjected to a near-fault directivity pulse-like earthquake should be explicitly expressed as the bending moment-rotation relationship of the pier base,which is characterized by the centrally strengthened hysteretic cycles at some point of the loading time-history curve.The results show that there is an amplification of the vertical deflection in the girder's mid-span owing to the high vertical ground motion.In light of these findings,the effect of the vertical ground motion should be used to adjust the unconservative amplification constant 2/3 of the vertical-to-horizontal peak ground motion ratio in the seismic design of bridge.

Parametric analysis on buffeting performance of a long-span high-speed railway suspension bridge

The buffeting performance of kilometer-level high-speed railway suspension bridges has a great impact on the smooth operation of high-speed trains.To investigate the buffeting performance of the structure significantly different from traditional suspension bridges,the first long-span high-speed railway suspension bridge,Wufengshan Yangtze River Bridge(WYRB),is taken as a numerical example to demonstrate the effects of structural parameters and wind field parameters on the buffeting responses.Based on the design information,the spatial finite element model(FEM)of WYRB is established before testing its accuracy.The fluctuating wind fields are simulated via both classical and stochastic wave based spectral representation method(SRM).Finite element method is further taken to analyze the parametric sensitivity on wind induced buffeting responses in time domain.The results show that the vertical displacement is more sensitive to the changing dead load than the lateral and torsional ones.The larger stiffness of the main girder and the lower sag-to-span ratio are both helpful to reduce the buffeting responses.Wind spectrum and coherence function are key influencing factors to the responses so setting proper wind field parameters are essential in the wind-resistant design stage.The analytical results can provide references for wind resistance analysis and selection of structural and fluctuating wind field parameters for similar long-span high-speed railway suspension bridges.

Seismic analysis of high-speed railway irregular bridge–track system considering V-shaped canyon effect

To explore the effect of canyon topography on the seismic response of railway irregular bridge-track system that crosses a V-shaped canyon, seismic ground motions of the horizontal site and V-shaped canyon site were simulated through theoretical analysis with 12 earthquake records selected from the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center(PEER) Strong Ground Motion Database matching the site condition of the bridge.Nonlinear seismic response analyses of an existing 11-span irregular simply supported railway bridge-track system were performed under the simulated spatially varying ground motions. The effects of the V-shaped canyon topography on the peak ground acceleration at bridge foundations and seismic responses of the bridge-track system were analyzed. Comparisons between the results of horizontal and V-shaped canyon sites show that the top relative displacement between adjacent piers at the junction of the incident side and the back side of the V-shaped site is almost two times that of the horizontal site, which also determines the seismic response of the fastener. The maximum displacement of the fastener occurs in the V-shaped canyon site and is 1.4 times larger than that in the horizontal site. Neglecting the effect of V-shaped canyon leads to the inappropriate assessment of the maximum seismic response of the irregular high-speed railway bridge-track system. Moreover, engineers should focus on the girder end to the left or right of the two fasteners within the distance of track seismic damage.

Study on Noise Characteristics of T-Type Section Bridges

The integral Helmholtz equation is derived with the acoustic radiation of railway bridges taken into acount and by using the transfer matrix method for railway bridge and the boundary element method for the infinite sonic field. Then, the noises generated by a high speed train passing over a bridge are analytically studied. It is shown that high speed railway noises are of wide frequency, and that reducing vibration does not necessary lowering noises unless the most significant noises at special frequencies are decreased.

BDS/GPS deformation analysis of a long-span cable-stayed bridge based on colored noise filtering

Combining GPS and BDS technology to monitor the deformation of long-span railway bridges with stricter deformation control requirements is of significance to the safety and control of the bridge and the safety of railway traffic.Previous studies have ignored the influence of coloured noise in the deformation time series.This is not conducive to accurate deformation analysis of long-span railway bridges.Therefore,GPS,BDS and GPS/BDS monitoring data of Ganjiang Bridge located in Ganzhou city,Jiangxi Province,China are adopted in this paper to filter the coloured noise in the deformation time series by principal component analysis(PCA),and the influence of coloured noise on the deformation analysis results of railway bridge is analysed.The experimental results show that the diurnal temperature difference causes the mid-span and the tower of the railway cable-stayed bridge to deform with a period of about one day in the vertical and longitudinal directions,respectively.Ignoring colored noise will make the uncertainty of the deformation parameter estimation overly optimistic.PCA can significantly reduce the coloured noise,and thus reduce the uncertainty of deformation parameter estimation by about 73%.Moreover,the average difference between the daily periodic motion amplitudes of the monitoring points obtained by using GPS and BDS deformation time series is 1.65 mm.The use of GPS/BDS deformation time series is not only helpful to reduce the influence of coloured noise,but also can reduce the difference between amplitude analysis results obtained from GPS and BDS deformation time series.

Analysis of rail-bridge interaction of a high-speed railway suspension bridge under near-fault pulse-type earthquakes

Due to the limitations of railway route selection,some high-speed railways are inevitably built near or across fault zones.To study the distribution of rail-bridge interaction under different load history states of suspension bridges under three types of near-fault pulse-type earthquakes,this paper takes China’s longest high-speed railway suspension bridge—Wufengshan Yangtze River Bridge-as the background and establishes a spatial model of the rail-bridge interaction of a suspension bridge.The results show that:under the constant load state,the distribution of additional force under three types of pulse-type earthquakes is generally consistent,and pulse-type earthquakes produce more significant responses than non-pulse-type earthquakes;with fling-step pulse being the largest,it is advised to specifically consider the influence of the fling-step pulse in the calculation.Under the initial condition of the main beam temperature loading history,all rail-bridge additional forces increase significantly,particularly affecting the steel rail system.The value of the rail-bridge interaction additional force under the near-fault earthquake in the initial state of the suspension bridge when the train deflection load is loaded from the tower to the mid-span is more significant and particularly unfavourable.The initial effect of the braking load will weaken the effect of the deflection load loading history.The results of the study indicate that the effect of the initial state of suspension bridges is an important factor influencing the rail-bridge interaction under near-fault pulse-type earthquakes,which needs to be considered in future seismic design.

Fatigue damage reliability analysis for Nanjing Yangtze river bridge using structural health monitoring data

To evaluate the fatigue damage reliability of critical members of the Nanjing Yangtze river bridge, according to the stress-number curve and Miner’s rule, the corresponding expressions for calculating the structural fatigue damage reliability were derived. Fatigue damage reliability analysis of some critical members of the Nanjing Yangtze river bridge was carried out by using the strain-time histories measured by the structural health monitoring system of the bridge. The corresponding stress spectra were obtained by the real-time rain-flow counting method. Results of fatigue damage were calculated respectively by the reliability method at different reliability and compared with Miner’s rule. The results show that the fatigue damage of critical members of the Nanjing Yangtze river bridge is very small due to its low live-load stress level.

Seismic response of the long-span steel truss arch bridge with the thrust under multidimensional excitation

Purpose–Under different ground motion excitation modes,the spatial coupling effect of seismic response for the arch bridge with thrust,seismic weak parts and the internal force components of the control section of main arch ribs are analyzed.Design/methodology/approach–Taking a 490 m deck type railway steel truss arch bridge as the background,the dynamic calculation model of the whole bridge was established by SAP2000 software.The seismic response analyses under one-,two-and three-dimension(1D,2D and 3D)uniform ground motion excitations were carried out.Findings–For the steel truss arch bridge composed of multiple arch ribs,any single direction ground motion excitation will cause large axial force in the chord of arch rib.The axial force caused by transverse and vertical ground motion excitation in the chord of arch crown area is 1.4–3.6 times of the corresponding axial force under longitudinal seismic excitation.The in-plane bending moment caused by the lower chord at the vault is 4.2–5.5 times of the corresponding bending moment under the longitudinal seismic excitation.For the bottom chord of arch rib,the arch foot is the weak part of earthquake resistance,but for the upper chord of arch rib,the arch foot,arch crown and the intersection of column and upper chord can all be the potential earthquake-resistant weak parts.The normal stress of the bottom chord of the arch rib under multidimensional excitation is mainly caused by the axial force,but the normal stress of the upper chord of the arch rib is caused by the axial force,in-plane and out of plane bending moment.Originality/value–The research provides specific suggestions for ground motion excitation mode and also provides reference information for the earthquake-resistant weak part and seismic design of long-span deck type railway steel truss arch bridges.