Minimum Design Requirements of High-Speed RailwayBridges Using Reliability-Based Design Optimization

Constructing high-speed railway networks received a great attention during pastdecade raising new safety concerns on infrastructure (particularly bridges). It ismainly because of possible excessive vibrations due to higher operating speeds.In this regard, deficiency or vague scientific background for some of designmethodologies are shown by former studies; among which is the adopted safetyfactor for running safety. This limit state occurs if the load path from the trainto the bridge is disturbed by dislocating ballast particles because of excessivevertical accelerations of the bridge deck. Hence, the current article is devotedto update the conventional design methodology. For this objective, reliabilitybaseddesign optimization technique is employed to propose minimum allowablemass and stiffness (or maximum permissible fundamental frequency) which assuressatisfying target reliability level. This is achieved by adaptively trainingKriging meta-models to surrogate the computational models. It seems that theproposed method can result in lighter (economical) bridges in comparison tothe conventional design methodology; however, this beneficial aspect vanishesby increasing span length of the bridge.
QC 20211027
Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation program
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