Safety and comfort assessment of a train passing over an earthquake-damaged bridge based on a probability model

Abstract

After an earthquake, a track-bridge system may suffer damage and residual deformation, posing a threat for trains passing over a bridge. However, since railway transportation is an important channel for disaster relief, the timely passage of trains is of great significance for the transportation of materials and personnel. In the past, subjective and experience-based judgments were made on whether a train can pass over an earthquake-damaged bridge, and no relevant numerical calculations were carried out. Therefore, a strategy for the evaluation of train performance when passing over existing bridges after earthquakes was proposed. The strategy considers the randomness of track irregularity, and evaluates the running safety performance (RSP) and running comfort performance (RCP) of trains passing over existing bridges from the perspective of probability. The probability law of a lateral residual bridge deformation influence on the RSP and RCP after an earthquake was revealed. Finally, the maximum train passing speed which ensures the RSP was recommended.

Keywords:

• Probability model
• train speed
• train-track-bridge system
• earthquake damages
• residual deformation
• running safety
• running comfort

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

Additional information

Funding

The work presented in this paper was supported by grants from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 11972379, U1934207, and 51778630), Central South University (Grant Nos. 502045006, 502390001 and innovation-driven project 502501006), Fund of Engineering Research Center for Seismic Disaster Prevention and Engineering Geological Disaster Detection of Jiangxi Province (SDGD202001) and the Key R&D Program of Hunan Province (2020SK2060).