Vibration of railway bridges under a moving train by using bridge-track-vehicle element

During the last two decades, much attention has been paid to various vibration problems associated with railways. They include the dynamic response of railway bridges and railway tracks at grade under the action of moving trains. However, studies on the role of track structures on the vibration of railway bridges are rather limited. In this paper, a new element called bridge-track-vehicle element is proposed for investigating the interactions among a moving train, and its supporting railway track structure and bridge structure. The moving train is modelled as a series of two-degree-of-freedom mass-spring-damper systems at the axle locations. A bridge-track-vehicle element consists of vehicles modelled as mass-spring-damper systems, an upper beam element to model the rails and a lower beam element to model the bridge deck. The two beam elements are interconnected by a series of springs and dampers to model the rail bed. The investigation shows that the effect of track structure on the dynamic response of bridge structure is insignificant. However, the effect of the bridge structure on the dynamic response of the track structure is considerable.