Major cities in Sweden experience a population growth, demanding innovative solutions regarding land exploitation for residential housing. One solution is to build closer to existing railway tracks, however difficulties arise regarding determining traffic induced vibrations from trains. This sometimes results in vibrations being too large in buildings regarding comfort, resulting in expensive measures taken as to reduce the vibrations. The scope of this thesis is to investigate the soil-structure interaction caused by traffic induced vibrations in buildings using ABAQUS FE software, where the aim is to partly investigate how a structure effects surrounding soil, partly to investigate which parameters of a structure has largest favorable impact on foundation vibrations. Major results include that ground vibrations at 2-4 meters parallel to a structure relative to the vibration source remain constant, independent on whether a house is present or not. Further results show that increasing the thickness of the foundation slab has a mitigating effect on the induced vibrations. The main conclusions of this thesis include that quadratic elements are superior to linear elements for dynamic analyses for soil, and that accelerometers should be placed at least 2-4 m next to an existing structure to obtain accurate measurements comparable to if no structure was present. / Större städer i Sverige upplever en befolkningstillväxt, vilket resulterar i att kreativa lösningar måste introduceras gällande markexploatering för bostadshus. En sådan lösning är att bygga närmre befintlig järnväg, dock resulterar detta i svårigheter gällande att kvantifiera magnituden av trafikinducerade vibrationer i byggnadsfundament orsakade av tågtrafik. En konsekvens av detta är att vibrationsnivåerna i husen ibland blir för stora sett till komfortvibrationer, vilket resulterar i att dyra åtgärder måste tas för att minska vibrationerna. Denna avhandling syftar till att genom att använda ABAQUS FE-mjukvara utforska jord-strukturinverkan i hus orsakade av trafikvibrationer. Målet är delvis att undersöka hur byggnation påverkar omgivande markvibrationer, delvis att undersöka vilka parametrar som har störst gynnsam effekt gällande dämpning av trafikinducerade vibrationer. De viktigaste resultaten indikerar att markvibrationer 2-4 meter bredvid ett hus relativt vibrationskällan förblir oförändrade oberoende av om byggnation existerar eller ej, samt att en ökning av tjockleken av grundplattan resulterar i minskade fundamentvibrationer. Slutsatserna som presenteras är flera, däribland att kvadratiska element är mer beräkningseffektiva än linjära element för dynamiska analyser för jord, samt att accelerometrar bör placeras minst 2-4 m bredvid ett befintligt hus för att erhålla mätdata jämförbara med om ett hus inte skulle finnas på platsen.

This thesis presents a state-of-the-art-review and twodifferent approaches for solving the moving load problem ofcable-stayed and suspension bridges. The first approach uses a simplified analysis method tostudy the dynamic response of simple cable-stayed bridgemodels. The bridge is idealized as a Bernoulli-Euler beam onelastic supports with varying support stiffness. To solve theequation of motion of the bridge, the finite difference methodand the mode superposition technique are used. The second approach is based on the nonlinear finite elementmethod and is used to study the response of more realisticcable-stayed and suspension bridge models considering exactcable behavior and nonlinear geometric effects. The cables aremodeled using a two-node catenary cable element derived using"exact" analytical expressions for the elastic catenary. Twomethods for evaluating the dynamic response are presented. Thefirst for evaluating the linear traffic load response using themode superposition technique and the deformed dead load tangentstiffness matrix, and the second for the nonlinear traffic loadresponse using the Newton-Newmark algorithm. The implemented programs have been verified by comparinganalysis results with those found in the literature and withresults obtained using a commercial finite element code.Several numerical examples are presented including one for theGreat Belt suspension bridge in Denmark. Parametric studieshave been conducted to investigate the effect of, among others,bridge damping, bridge-vehicle interaction, cables vibration,road surface roughness, vehicle speed, and tuned mass dampers.From the numerical study, it was concluded that road surfaceroughness has great influence on the dynamic response andshould always be considered. It was also found that utilizingthe dead load tangent stiffness matrix, linear dynamic trafficload analysis give sufficiently accurate results from theengineering point of view. / QC 20100511