Dynamic Characteristics of Railway Bridges in the European Rail Network: Insights for Future Classification Approaches

Abstract

In European high-speed rail, ensuring and verifying compatibility between traffic volume and the existing infrastructure is increasingly challenging for infrastructure operators as traffic volumes steadily rise. To provide a realistic dynamic assessment of railway bridges, it is essential to accurately identify the existing bridge characteristics. In this context, the damping properties of the bridge used in calculations significantly influence the generated results. Eurocode EN 1991-2 classifies railway bridges into three categories; however, due to a lack of reliable damping factors for railway bridges, a very conservative approach is adopted, which is why damping factors identified from in-situ measurements are mostly well above the normative specifications. This contribution provides an overview of the European bridge landscape in the high-speed rail network, using a data set of 379 bridges for which dynamic parameters from in-situ measurements are available. The data set provides insights into the composition of the European bridge landscape. It demonstrates once again that actual damping properties significantly exceed those of normative approaches, highlighting the potential for a redefinition. Finally, a possible recategorization of railway bridges is discussed, with the inclusion of several system parameters enabling the derivation of new approaches to defining damping factors as an alternative to the Eurocode. These novel approaches could make the existing potential of the bridge infrastructure available for realistic dynamic assessment of railway bridges through computational analysis.