Dynamic Serviceability and Traffic Safety Assessment and Upgrading of Historic Railway Bridges

The paper discusses the application of modern computational dynamic analysis to the assessment of the dynamic performance of historic railway bridges. The phenomena, such us dynamic amplification, serviceability-critical bridge and train accelerations, as well as bridge-train interaction and resonance are outlined and discussed. The background to the current serviceability requirements, based on the UIC and Eurocode recommendations is provided and these requirements are discussed. This is followed by applications demonstrating the use of the advanced dynamic analysis in the assessment of railway bridges. Examples include historic bridges that were analysed to assess safe operational speeds, based on the serviceability criteria. Means of improving the dynamic performance of these bridges are examined and discussed.