Dynamic Assessment of Timber Railroad Bridges Using Displacements
Publication: Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 20, Issue 10
Abstract
Infrastructure spending is such a large component of a railroad budget that it must be prioritized to meet the concurrent safety and line capacity requirements. Current bridge inspection and rating practices recommend observing bridge movements under a live load to help assess bridge conditions. However, measuring bridge movements under trains in the field is a challenging task. Even when they are measured, the relationships between bridge displacements and different loads/speeds are generally unknown. The research reported herein shows the effects of known train loadings, speeds, and traffic directions on the magnitude and frequency of displacements as measured on timber pile bents of a Class I railroad bridge. Researchers collected both vertical and transverse (lateral) displacements under revenue service traffic and work trains using LVDTs with a sampling frequency of 100 Hz. To investigate the effect of traffic on timber railroad bridges, displacements were measured under crossing events at different speeds and directions of a test train of known speed and weight provided by the railroad for the field experiment. The results indicate that bridge transverse displacements could help to capture critical changes in timber railroad bridge serviceability (i.e., ability to safely carry out railroad operations) as a function of railroad loading, speed, and direction.
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Acknowledgments
The financial support for this research is gratefully acknowledged from the following sources: Association of American Railroads Technology Scanning Program; O. H. Ammann Research Fellowship of the Structural Engineering Institute—ASCE; Talentia Fellowship (Junta de Andalucía, Spain); and Illinois Graduate College Dissertation Travel Committee at the University of Illinois at Urbana–Champaign. The authors thank the Canadian National Railway (CN) bridge testing team for their support in the monitoring campaign of the U2.60 Bluford Bridge: Dave Roberts, Vamsi Tolikonda, and Zhenyu Zhao. The assistance and suggestions from Mark Paull from CN and Mike Dooley from ESCA Consultants are appreciated. Finally, Dan Painter (ROW Consultants) provided protection during the bridge monitoring.
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Published In
Journal of Bridge Engineering
Volume 20 • Issue 10 • October 2015
Copyright
© 2014 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jun 26, 2014
Accepted: Oct 9, 2014
Published online: Nov 4, 2014
Published in print: Oct 1, 2015
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