Running Safety Assessment of High-Speed Railway Vehicles on Fault-Crossing Bridge Under Pulse-Type Ground Motions

This research addresses a critical engineering challenge: the intersection of high-speed railway (HSR) systems with geological faults. Specifically, it investigates the running safety of HSR vehicles on fault-crossing bridges subjected to pulse-type ground motions. To enable numerical simulations of this complex scenario, computational formulas of four types of seismic excitation methods (SEM) are derived. A feasibility comparison demonstrates that, under the dual criteria of computational simplicity and accuracy, the big stiffness method (BSM) is the most suitable method for imposing non-uniform seismic excitation on the elastoplastic vehicle–rail–bridge coupled model (EVRBCM). It is found that the closer the bridge span is to the fault-crossing position, the greater the deformation of the fixed bearing, and running safety criteria reach their peak values as the vehicles approach the fault. Furthermore, the middle span is identified as the most critical for fault-crossing position from running safety perspective, due to the highest criteria values under pulse-type ground motions compared to other fault-crossing positions.