DYNAMICS OF RAILWAY

STRUCTURES
PAPER DISSECTION
FINAL ASSIGNMENT PRESENTATION
DYNAMIC ANALYSIS CLASS – PROF. KANG MI KIM

ADIPRABOWO
WICAKSONO
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WHAT ARE WE TALKING
ABOUT
Symplified Dynamic Analysis of Railway Bridges under High-Speed Trains
Thesis by Christoffer Johansson of KTH Royal Institute of Technology
Stockholm, Sweden (2013)

European High-Speed Lines was once started in 1981 when France made its first line between
Paris to Lyon with trains running at a speed of 270 km/h. Since the high-speed line kicks off,
25 years has passed, and the total line lengths in Europe have already
skyrocketed from 700 km to 6200 km.
The development of HSR also posed new challenges for structural engineers and researchers. For
instance, the HSR can induce large vibrations in the bridge superstructure. At these high speeds, it
is also possible that the train frequency coincides with the natural frequencies of the bridge and
causes resonance.

It is Important to have Reliable models that are able to

simulate the response during train passages.
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THESIS OUTLINE
Consists of 4 Academic Paper, all of them associated
one another to answer one problem.

Define the Dynamical System & Develop a Develop a method that can be used to assess
general model to predict the dynamic response the dynamic response of bridges on an entire
of railway bridges under moving loads railway line

Construct design curves by doing simulations on Use all the methods developed in former papers
a number of ‘fictitious’ bridges to perform dynamic simulations on existing
railway lines

Develop a Method for the Assessment of a large number of railway bridges

along a High-Speed Line with respect to their dynamical behavior.
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PARAMETERS TO
The Ideal solution would be to consider all parameters as realistic as possible as what happens in the ‘real world’.
CONSIDER
However, most of the times it is not possible due to the lack of information and data during the early stage of
the design.

Considering the availability of data in early stage of design, design simplification, and also accuracy of the results
calculations, the author decides that there are 6 main assumptions that need to be made.

“Everything must be made as simple as

possible, but not simpler”
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DYNAMICAL MODEL
As the parameters we have mentioned beforehand, we will assume the bridges in this thesis as a
Bernoulli-Euler beam. Basically, means that shear deformations and torsional/plate modes are
neglected. Here is a figure for multi-span bridge divided into j spans. The uncoupled modal equation
for the general multi-span is as follows:
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DYNAMICAL MODEL
From another paper (Rao, 2007), the exact solution of the normal mode for a Bernoulli-Euler beam
can be found as:

The general solution to solve the second-order nonhomogeneous differential equations consists of
complementary solutions and particular solutions. In this Thesis the Author decide to use Laplace
Transformation to solve it, due to the fact that it reduces a differential equation in the time domain to
an algebraic equation in the frequency domain.
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DYNAMICAL MODEL
Utilizing Laplace transformation, we
could solve the equation as follows:

And we can also obtain the

response in time-domain by the
inverse Laplace transformation.
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PARAMETRIC STUDIES
1. DEVELOPMENT OF DESIGN CURVES

Even though the closed-form solution already developed in the last slide, it does not
provide any new insights for deciding which bridges are suitable for high-speed line. In
this part, we will carry out several parametric studies on ‘fictitious’ bridges to deepen
our understanding regarding the topic.

All the simulations are performed with these conditions:

 Utilizing Eurocode Trains, HSLM A1 – A10
 Running at speeds of 100 – 300 km/h
 Speed increment of 2.5 km/h
 Investigated 73.440 railway bridges
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PARAMETRIC STUDIES
1. DEVELOPMENT OF DESIGN CURVES

Based on the simulations the Author ….. (A)

have done, the following empirical
equations can be constructed: ….. (B)

X is either displacement, angular rotation or acceleration. If Eq. (B) is used

to evaluate the displacements or angular rotations, then Ω represents the
bending stiffness EI. If instead for acceleration, then Ω represents the mass
per unit length m. Those empirical variables also consider the effects from
damping, span length, fundamental frequency and number of spans.

This Thesis shows, for the first time in academic

literature, the empirical correlation between all
those variables to be in one diagram
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PARAMETRIC STUDIES
1. DEVELOPMENT OF DESIGN CURVES

This diagram reveals the way in which

accelerations
some of the most fundamental
variables affect the dynamic response
of the bridge. We can simply see that
short-span bridges with a low
fundamental frequency have higher
accelerations than the longer bridges
if all other variables are similar

PARAMETRIC STUDIES
2. STEEL & CONCRETE BRIDGE COMPARISON
It is important to identify which one is more
suitable for HSR, since the project managers usually
provide the engineers with conceptual designs. The
study is limited to beam type bridges, simulations
were performed on simply supported beams with a
span length between 8 – 60 m, fundamental
frequency 1.5 – 30 Hz, and mass per unit length of
10000 kg/m was used for all simulations.
Dynamic
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The goal of this is to seek what is the mass per
unit length required in order to limit the
accelerations at 3.5 m/s2 (Eurocode limitations).
It is also stated that Large difference between steel
and concrete bridge can be explained by the fact
that steel bridges have a much lower damping than
concrete bridges. The Author did empirical studies
on 38 steel and 23 concrete bridges.
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PARAMETRIC STUDIES
2. STEEL & CONCRETE BRIDGE COMPARISON
From the study, we can conclude that :
1. Steel and Composite bridges with
damper installed and L < 30 m is
within the allowable range.
2. For all bridges with L > 30 m, the
engineer should try to obtain a
high fundamental frequency and
mass to reduce the excessive
vibration amplitudes.
3. Concrete Bridges with L > 45 m
and Pre-Stressed Concrete bridges
with L > 50 m is within the
allowable range.
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PARAMETRIC STUDIES
3. EFFECTS OF ELASTIC SUPPORT

The soil-structure interaction can be

considered by introducing elastic springs
at the supports. We can consider the
elasticity of the soil type with spring
coefficient (kv) with a stiffness between
0.5 GN/m – 500 GN/m.
The maximum accelerations are Spring amplification
calculated for bridges with span length factor ηspring is
between 8 – 60 m, and a fundamental introduced to
frequency between 1.5 – 30 Hz, damping simplify the study
value of 1% is adopted for all models. effect of the springs.
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PARAMETRIC STUDIES
3. EFFECTS OF ELASTIC SUPPORT

Based on the diagram,

it can be seen that ηspring  1
when both L  0 & f0  0.
From that we can conclude, this is the
area in which the train axles induce
resonance on short-span bridges.
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PARAMETRIC STUDIES
4. EFFECTS OF LOAD DISTRIBUTION

The existing design codes allow

engineers to take into account the
load distribution by sharing the
load to adjacent sleepers. The
advantage of using a load
distribution lies in reducing the
acceleration predicted for The variable ηd is introduced to
short-span railway bridges. The quantify the effect of the load
simulations needed to check the distributions is defined. Where
effect of the load distribution aldmax and amax are the maximum
method. acceleration obtained with and
without the load distribution.
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PARAMETRIC STUDIES
4. EFFECTS OF LOAD DISTRIBUTION

The diagrams presented that the acceleration can be reduced significantly from the initial
value for a certain bridge configuration, simply by assuming another load distribution.
Note also that the acceleration almost not affected by span length.
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PARAMETRIC STUDIES
5. INTEGRATED BACK WALLS
Bridges with backwalls are quite
common in Sweden because of its
advantages. There will be no restraining
forces arise in the foundation from the
temperature and shrinkage, and that
expansion joints can also be avoided.
The study try to find correlations
between bridges that installed
backwalls and the one that doesn’t. The
design of backwalls can be modelled as a
simply supported bridge with cantilevers
on both sides. The weight of the
backwalls are neglected.
The variable ηbackwall is introduced to quantify the effect of the load
distributions is defined. This is to determines how much is the maximum
acceleration increases by introducing backwalls.
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PARAMETRIC STUDIES
5. INTEGRATED BACK WALLS

The diagrams presented that the maximum acceleration increase with backwalls. The
response also increases with the length of the backwalls. Another observation from the
diagram shows that the amplification factor tends to increase with fundamental frequency.
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ANSWERING THE PROBLEM
ASSESSMENT OF EXISTING RAILWAY LINES
From economical point of view, it would perhaps be better to upgrade
an existing railway line for HSR than to build new ones. The Author has
developed a probabilistic method for assessing a network of bridges
that suits the codes for HSR using the methods that have been explained
beforehand. The general outline of the process is as follows:
• Categorizing bridges with similar properties. Collecting its data from
drawings to construct prediction bounds.
• Collecting all known deterministic variables for bridge number r. The
number of samples s are determined.
• Starting the structural evaluation simulation using this Thesis
algorithm. The probability of failure Pf is updated, and the
convergence criteria checked by plotting s against Pf. The variable
n(amax > 3.5 m/s2) is the number of times that the limit state function
is exceeded.
• Last step is to estimate the cost of upgrading the bridge network.
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CONCLUSIONS
As stated, the Thesis Goal is to develop simplified methods for the dynamic analysis of railway bridges under HSR.
The Author derived a closed-form solution for the vibration of a multi-span beam bridge under moving load. The
model has proven to be very useful for studying simple structures with a beam type behavior.

Along with the theoretical part, there are also practical conclusions that has been identified during the project:
 Multi-span continuous beam bridges have a response lower by up to 60% than a similar simply supported bridge
 Concrete bridges are, due to their high mass and damping, suitable for HSR regardless of the span length.
 Steel and Steel-Concrete composite bridges should only be adopted for span lengths over 30 m.
 An elastically supported beam has larger accelerations than a similar simply supported beam.
 The response is reduced by up to 80% if load distribution is considered in the design.
 Bridges with integrated back walls should be avoided on HSR.
THANK YOU