No description available.

Targeting heavier freights and transporting passengers with higher speeds became the strategic railway development during the past decades significantly increasing interests on railway networks. Among different components of a railway network, bridges constitute a major portion imposing considerable construction and maintenance costs. On the other hand, heavier axle loads and higher trains speeds may cause resonance occurrence on bridges; which consequently limits operational train speed and lines. Therefore, satisfaction of new expectations requires conducting a large number of dynamic assessments/analyses on bridges, especially on existing ones. Evidently, such assessments need detailed information, expert engineers and consuming considerable computational costs. In order to save the computational efforts and decreasing required amount of expertise in preliminary evaluation of dynamic responses, predictive models using artificial neural network (ANN) are proposed in this study. In this regard, a previously developed closed-form solution method (based on solving a series of moving force) was adopted to calculate the dynamic responses (maximum deck deflection and maximum vertical deck acceleration) of randomly generated bridges. Basic variables in generation of random bridges were extracted both from literature and geometrical properties of existing bridges in Sweden. Different ANN architectures including number of inputs and neurons were considered to train the most accurate and computationally cost-effective mode. Then, the most efficient model was selected by comparing their performance using absolute error (ERR), Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) and coefficient of determination (R2). The obtained results revealed that the ANN model can acceptably predict the dynamic responses. The proposed model presents Err of about 11.1% and 9.9% for prediction of maximum acceleration and maximum deflection, respectively. Furthermore, its R2 for maximum acceleration and maximum deflection predictions equal to 0.982 and 0.998, respectively. And its RMSE is 0.309 and 1.51E-04 for predicting the maximum acceleration and maximum deflection prediction, respectively. Finally, sensitivity analyses were conducted to evaluate the importance of each input variable on the outcomes. It was noted that the span length of the bridge and speed of the train are the most influential parameters.

Understanding how different parameters affect the dynamic response of high-speed railway bridges is crucial to selecting an efficient structural form. Despite existing numerous publications within this field, only few address the importance of torsional deformations. The main objective of this thesis is to investigate the influence of the torsional resistance of the deck on the dynamic response of an existing bridge. Ulla River Viaduct is presented as a case study, allowing to analyse some aspects of its design and what their alteration entails. To this end, 6 different 3D FE models are compared, 5 of which show a modification from the original configuration. In addition, several positions of the train are considered to contrast the effects when the torsional modes are excited. The performed dynamic calculations are based on the implicit direct integration procedure. The analysis of the case study demonstrates the benefit of closing the torsional circuit of the deck. The results also evidence the need of including torsional effects in its dynamic assessment when low values of torsional rigidity are considered. All this is not easy when simplified 2D or 3D beam models are used. As a final remark, the original design of the Ulla River Viaduct is found highly efficient from a dynamical point of view.

Increasing the operational speed of trains has attracted a lot of interest in the last decades and has brought new challenges, especially in terms of infrastructure design methodology, as it may induce excessive vibrations. Such demands can damage bridges, which in turn increases maintenance costs, endangers the safety of passing trains and disrupts passenger comfort. Conventional design provisions should therefore be evaluated in the light of modern concerns; nevertheless, several previous studies have highlighted some of their shortcomings. It should be emphasized that most of these studies have neglected the uncertainties involved, which preventsthe reported results from representing a complete picture of the problem. In this respect, the present thesis is dedicated to evaluating the performance of conventional design methods, especially those related to running safety and passenger comfort, using probabilistic approaches. To achieve this objective, a preliminary study was carried out using the first-order reliability method for short/medium span bridges passed by trains at a wide range of operating speeds. Comparison of these results with the corresponding deterministic responses showed that applying a constant safety factor to the running safety threshold does not guarantee that the safety index will be identical for all bridges. It also shows that the conventional design approaches result in failure probabilities that are higher than the target values. This conclusion highlights the need to update the design methodology for running safety. However, it would be essential to determine whether running safety is the predominant design criterion before conducting further analysis. Therefore, a stochastic comparison between this criterion and passenger comfort was performed. Due to the significant computational cost of such investigations, subset simulation and crude Monte-Carlo (MC) simulation using meta-models based on polynomial chaos expansion were employed. Both methods were found to perform well, with running safety almost always dominating the passenger comfort limit state. Subsequently, classification-based meta-models, e.g. support vector machines, k-nearest neighbours and decision trees, were combined using ensemble techniques to investigate the influence of soil-structure interaction on the evaluated reliability of running safety. The obtained results showed a significant influence, highlighting the need for detailed investigations in further studies. Finally, a reliability-based design optimization was conducted to update the conventional design method of running safety by proposing minimum requirements for the mass per length and moment of inertia of bridges. It is worth mentioning that the inner loop of the method was solved by a crude MC simulation using adaptively trained Kriging meta-models. / Att öka tågens hastighet har väckt stort intresse under de senaste decennierna och har medfört nya utmaningar, särskilt när det gäller broanalyser, eftersom tågen inducerar stora vibrationer. Sådana vibrationer kan öka underhållskostnaderna, äventyra säkerheten för förbipasserande tåg och påverka passagerarkomforten. Konstruktionsbestämmelser bör därför utvärderas mot bakgrund av dessa problem; dock har flera tidigare studier belyst några av bristerna i dagens bestämmelser. Det bör understrykas att de flesta av dessa studier har försummat de osäkerheter som är involverade, vilket hindrar de rapporterade resultaten från att representera en fullständig bild av problemet. I detta avseende syftar denna avhandling till att utvärdera prestandan hos konventionella analysmetoder, särskilt de som rör körsäkerhet och passagerarkomfort, med hjälp av sannolikhetsmetoder. För att uppnå detta mål genomfördes en preliminär studie med första ordningens tillförlitlighetsnmetod för broar med kort/medellång spännvidd som passeras av tåg med ett brett hastighetsspektrum. Jämförelse av dessa resultat med motsvarande deterministiska respons visade att tillämpa en konstant säkerhetsfaktor för verifieringen av trafiksäkerhet inte garanterar att säkerhetsindexet kommer att vara identiskt för alla broar. Det visar också att de konventionella analysmetoderna resulterar i brottsannolikheter som är högre än målvärdena. Denna slutsats belyser behovet av att uppdatera analysmetoden för trafiksäkerhet. Det skulle emellertid vara viktigt att avgöra om trafiksäkerhet är det dominerande designkriteriet innan ytterligare analyser genomförs. Därför utfördes en stokastisk jämförelse mellan detta kriterium och kriteriet för passagerarkomfort. På grund av den betydande. analystiden för sådana beräkningar användes delmängdssimulering och Monte-Carlo (MC) simulering med metamodeller baserade på polynomisk kaosutvidgning. Båda metoderna visade sig fungera bra, med trafiksäkerhet som nästan alltid dominerade över gränsningstillståndet för passagerarkomfort. Därefter kombinerades klassificeringsbaserade metamodeller som stödvektormaskin och beslutsträd genom ensembletekniker, för att undersöka påverkan av jord-brointeraktion på den utvärderade tillförlitligheten gällande trafiksäkerhet. De erhållna resultaten visade en signifikant påverkan och betonade behovet av detaljerade undersökningar genom ytterligare studier. Slutligen genomfördes en tillförlitlighetsbaserad konstruktionsoptimering för att föreslå ett minimikrav på erforderlig bromassa per längdmeter och tröghetsmoment. Det är värt att nämna att metodens inre loop löstes med en MC-simulering med adaptivt tränade Kriging-metamodeller. / <p>QC 20210910</p>