Dynamic Effects of Railway Traffic Due to Lateral Motion in Long Viaducts with High Piers

Abstract eng:
The layout of new high-speed railway lines often requires long slender viaducts, including continuous decks with lengths of 1000 m or more, and high piers or arches with heights over 70 m. These structures generally exhibit a high lateral compliance. The fundamental mode of vibration usually corresponds to this lateral motion, with frequencies lower than 1 Hz and associated to long wavelengths. Current experience on lateral behavior of bridges under traffic includes research work carried out by ERRI D181 committee [1], which considered problems in European bridges for conventional rail with steel open decks, and of much shorter length and deformation wavelengths. According to the conclusions from ERRI minimum lateral vibration frequencies of spans are required to be higher than 1.2 Hz in the new design codes [2]. However, this case does not correspond to the high speed rail viaducts described above, for which there is so far not enough evidence on the behavior nor sufficient knowledge of the relevant mechanisms. In this work we present newly developed models for considering the coupled dynamic behavior of vehicles and structure in railway viaducts. The structure is discretised with finite elements of beam and shell type, and vehicles are considered with 3D multibody models, within ABAQUS [3]. A novel technique for considering contact between wheels and rails has been developed. This model includes both vertical and lateral contact, incorporating an implementation of Kalker’s FASTSIM solution technique [4], providing adequate simulation of lateral nosing motion of railway vehicles. The models developed are applied to a representative case, the “Arroyo de Las Piedras” viaduct [5] with a total length of 1209 m and piers of 94m height. Several simulation scenarios are compared, considering track alignment irregularities or not as well as full interaction models or simpler moving load models.

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