Simplified dynamic analysis of railway bridges under high-speed trains

Sammanfattning: The world-wide development of new high-speed rail lines has led to more stringent design requirements for railway bridges. This is mainly due to the fact that a train at high speeds can cause resonance in the bridge superstructure.  In order to avoid problems of this kind, it has become essential to perform dynamic simulations, which are usually carried out in a time consuming finite element program. The main reason for not using an analytical solution is that this type of solution only exists for simple bridges, e.g., simply supported bridges.The aim of this thesis, is therefore the development of a simplified analytical model for preliminary dynamic analyses of railway bridges. The model is then used in several studies, both parametric and probabilistic ones, to determine the dynamic response of various railway bridges under moving loads. Special attention is paid to acceleration levels in the bridge superstructure, because previous studies have shown that these are often decisive. In the design, both the model and the numerical simulations can be used with considerable effectiveness to help engineers to define their structural systems.All bridges, throughout this thesis, have been modelled with elastically supported multi-span Bernoulli-Euler beams. The amount of dissipated energy is modelled using modal damping. The train load is modelled by concentrated loads, which implies that the vehicle-bridge interaction is not considered. A model with these characteristics can be used to analyse simply supported concrete bridges as well as multi-span steel bridges. Another advantage of the proposed method is that the solution is exact, because the equation of motion has been solved using a Laplace transform. A lot of effort has been made to have a model both as simple as possible and flexible enough to be able to study a wide variety of structures.The results of the case studies have shown that concrete bridges are more suitable than steel and composite bridges for use in the new high-speed lines. The simulations have also shown that short-span railway bridges have problems in meeting the design requirements. This confirms the high acceleration levels that were recorded in France, just after the inauguration of the new high-speed line between Lyon and Paris, on several short-span bridges. Furthermore, it was found that a multi-span bridge has a reduction in its dynamic response of up to 60 % compared to a similar simply supported bridge.