Derailment of trains moving on lead rubber bearing bridges under seismic loads

Abstract

This study investigates the derailment of trains moving on bridges with lead rubber bearings. A moving wheel/rail axis element that couples two wheels and rails together is first developed to generate a train finite element model with 12 cars, while the sliding, sticking, and separation modes of the wheels and rails are accurately simulated. The finite element results indicate that the base shear of the bridge with lead rubber bearings is much smaller than that without lead rubber bearings. Similar to the base shear, the train derailment coefficients for the bridge with lead rubber bearings are much smaller than those without lead rubber bearings because yield lead rubber bearings during large seismic loads can change the bridge natural frequency to avoid resonance. For earthquakes with a very long dominant period, the lead rubber bearing effect to reduce the train derailment may not be obvious because the natural period of the bridge due to the full yield of lead rubber bearings can approach the dominant period of the earthquake.

Effectiveness of an elastically supported beam under the action of moving loads traversing in the opposite direction

“…Based on such analysis, it was found that elastic bearings can be used to isolate vibration in the region where the environmental vibration needs to be controlled rigorously. An analysis carried out in Kawatani et al (2000, 2005), Ju (2020), and J. Liu and Shao (2018) showed the efficiency comparison between steel and elastic bearings for analyzing the dynamic response of vehicle–bridge interaction system of highway bridge using the numerical simulation method.…”

Effectiveness of LRB in Curved Bridge Isolation: A Numerical Study

“…(Kawashima et al [26]). Ju [27] determined that derailment of trains running on bridges with LRBs and the base shear of bridges with LRBs was significantly lower than those without LRBs. The numerical results of Kabir et al [28] revealed that long-duration ground vibration dominated both component failure probability and bridge system failure probability which are more than near-field and far-field ground motions.…”