Newsletter 26 – Sustainable and cost-efficient eco-design for rail assets: demonstrations from Work Package 16

DYNAMIC ANALYSIS OF BRIDGES

Under FP3-IAM4Rail Work Package 16 Trafikverket, together with the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) and Adif with INECO, are carrying out continuous measurements of the dynamic response of bridges. Dynamic analyses are often performed for railway bridges on high-speed lines to ensure that no negative effects arise due to passing trains, such as ballast instability caused by bridge resonance. Current criteria are based on limited studies; more recent research shows that these criteria are conservative and do not reflect the actual behaviour of bridges.

The use case aims to increase knowledge of the real behaviour of ballasted railway bridges. The ambition is to capture the bridge response during train passages using a monitoring and analysis platform that can be applied to multiple structures. This contributes to a better understanding of the bridges’ true dynamic behaviour, associated challenges and their sensitivity to defects in the track and rolling stock.

Read the full information here.