Evaluation of high-speed railway bridges based on a nondestructive monitoring system

Abstract

Recently, trains' velocities in Korea increased more than the speed used in the design of some bridges. Accordingly, this paper demonstrates the evaluation of a railway bridge due to high-speed trains' movement. A nondestructive monitoring system is used to assess the bridge performance under train speeds of 290, 360, 400 and 406 km/h. This system is comprised of a wireless short-term acceleration system and strain monitoring sensors attached to the bridge girder. The results of the analytical methods in time and frequency domains are presented. The following conclusions are obtained: the cross-correlation models for accelerations and strain measurements are effective to predict the performance of the bridge; the static behavior is increased with train speed developments; and the vibration, torsion, fatigue and frequency contents analyses of the bridge show that the bridge is safe under applied trains' speeds.