Railway vehicle and bridge interaction: Some approaches and applications

Abstract

The present paper describes the CAE-based approach for analysis of dynamics of a coupled model of a flexible railway bridge and a train. The approach is being implemented in Universal Mechanism (UM) software. The railway bridge is considered as a flexible multibody system. The dynamics of flexible bodies are simulated using data imported from finite element analysis (FEA) software. An application of the approach to the investigation of dynamics of a railway vehicle and a bridge supposes taking into account the flexibility of the bridge. Comparison of flexible deflections and stresses for the full and reduced FE-models for static and moving loads are presented. The simulation results for a high-speed train on a bridge that is modelled as a reduced FE-model with 50, 100 and 200 flexible modes, as well as comparison of simulation results for separate and coupled approaches to vehicle-bridge interaction (VBI), are shown. © 2010 WIT Press.