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.

Seismic response of rocking isolated railway bridge piers with sacrificial components

In this study, sacrificial components were incorporated into self-centering railway bridge piers to improve the lateral stiffness. The seismic response of this new detail was investigated. First, the method to compute the initial uplift moment of the self-centering pier is given. In addition, shaking table tests were conducted on a free-rocking pier without sacrificial components, which was used to validate a two-spring numerical model. Good agreement was obtained between the numerical results and experimental data. Furthermore, the validated model was employed to investigate the influence of sacrificial components on the seismic response of rocking piers. For this purpose, two models were developed, with and without sacrificial components. Nonlinear response history analysis was then performed on both models under three historical motions. The results showed that compared to the one without sacrificial components, the rocking pier with sacrificial components has comparable displacement at the top of the pier, and maximum uplift moment at high amplitude motion. Therefore, incorporating sacrificial components into the rocking pier can increase the lateral stiffness at service load and low amplitude frequent earthquakes but can produce comparable response at high seismic excitation. These results provide support for performance-based seismic design of self-centering rocking piers.

Rotational Friction Damper’s Performance for Controlling Seismic Response of High Speed Railway Bridge-Track System

CRTS-II slab ballastless track on bridge is a unique system in China high speed railway.The application of longitudinal continuous track system has obviously changed dynamic characteristics of bridge structure.The bridge system and CRTS-II track system form a complex nonlinear system.To investigate the seismic response of high speed railway(HSR)simply supported bridge-track system,nonlinear models of three-span simply supported bridge with piers of different height and CRTS-II slab ballastless track system are established.By seismic analysis,it is found that shear alveolar in CRTS-II track system is more prone to be damaged than bridge components,such as piers,girders and bearings.The result shows that the inconsistent displacement of bridge girders is the main cause of the CRTS-II track system’s damage.Then the rotational friction damper(RFD)is adopted,which utilizes the device’s rotation and friction to dissipate seismic energy.The hysteretic behavior of RFD is studied by numerical and experimental methods.Results prove that RFD can provide good hysteretic energy dissipation ability with stable performance.Furthermore,the analysis of RFD’s influence on seismic response of HSR bridge-track system shows that RFD with larger sliding force is more effective in controlling excessive inconsistent displacement where RFD is installed,though response of other bridge spans could slightly deteriorated.

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.