Traffic Safety & Passenger Comforts of a Suspension Bridge Considering Seismic Loads

The estimation of traffic safety and passenger comfort when the train is running on the bridge is a estimation unique to the railway bridge. The standards for such estimation are included in the Eurocode, the Shinkansen design criteria, and the design guideline of the Honam High-speed railway. The items are bridge responses including vertical displacement of bridge, vertical acceleration, and slab twist. In principle, a direct estimation based on the train responses has to take place. However, the estimation based on the bridge responses can be seen as an indirect estimation procedure for the convenience of the bridge designer. First, it is general practice that traffic safety can be verified as a derailment coefficient or wheel load decrement The general method of estimating passenger comfort is to calculate the acceleration within the train car-body. Various international indexes have been presented for this method. In the present study, traffic safety and passenger comforts are estimated directly by bridge/train interaction analysis. The acceleration and wheel load decrement are obtained for the estimation of traffic safety and passenger comforts of a suspension bridge which has main span length of 300m. Also, the consideration of seismic load with simultaneous action of moving train is done for bridge/train/earthquake interaction analysis.