INTERACTION RESPONSE OF TRAIN LOADS MOVING OVER A TWO-SPAN CONTINUOUS BEAM

Abstract

The objective of this study is to investigate the resonance and sub-resonance acceleration response of a two-span continuous railway bridge under the passage of moving train loadings. The continuous bridge is modeled as a Bernoulli–Euler beam with uniform span length and the moving train is simulated as a series of equidistant two degrees-of-freedom (2-DOF) mass–spring–damper units. The modal superposition method is adopted to compute the interaction dynamics of the train–bridge system. The numerical analyses indicate that (1) the train-induced resonance of the two-span continuous beam may result in significant amplification of the dynamic response of the train/bridge system; (2) for a two-span continuous beam, the first two resonant speeds may fall in the range of operating speeds of high-speed trains, which can lead to highly amplified vehicle responses; (3) due to the presence of sub-resonant peaks, the maximum acceleration of the two-span continuous beam need not occur at the midpoint of the beam; (4) inclusion of damping of a beam is helpful for reducing the train-induced resonant response on the beam, but the first two resonant peaks of the coupling system remain unchanged.