RAILWAY BRIDGE VEHICLE INTERACTION STUDIES WITH NEW VEHICLE MODEL

A new vehicle model for a conventional freight car is developed to study the interaction between a railway bridge and a moving freight train. A 175-ft (53.34-m) long, open-deck, single-track, riveted steel through truss railroad bridge is used in this study. The rail irregularities on the approaches and bridge are generated from the power spectral density functions for Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) class 4 and class 6 tracks, respectively. Impact percentages in the critical members of the bridge due to a three, 100-ton (where 1 ton = 8.9 kN) freight car train operating at 50 mph (80.45 km/hr) are calculated. These impact percentages are compared with the results of the previous study and the values specified by the American Railway Engineering Association (AREA).