Approach for redefining the damping factor of railway bridges with ballast superstructure: model calibration and guidelines for practical application

Abstract To ensure the compatibility between rolling stock and infrastructure when dynamically assessing railway bridges under high-speed traffic, the damping properties considered in the calculation model significantly influence the predicted acceleration amplitude at resonance. However, due to the normative specifications of EN 1991-2, which are considered to be overly conservative, damping factors that are far below the actual damping have to be used when predicting vibrations of railway bridges, which means that accelerations at resonance tend to be overestimated to an uneconomical extent. Comparisons between damping factors prescribed by the standard and those identified based on in situ structure measurements always reveal a large discrepancy between reality and regulation. Given this background, this contribution presents a novel approach for defining the damping factor of railway bridges with ballasted tracks, where the damping factor for bridges is mathematically determined based on three different two-dimensional mechanical models. The basic principle of the approach for mathematically determining the damping factor is to separately define and superimpose the dissipative contributions of the supporting structure (including the substructure) and the superstructure. Using the results of a measurement campaign on 15 existing steel railway bridges in the Austrian rail network, the presented mechanical models are calibrated, and by analysing the energy dissipation in the ballasted track, guiding principles for practical application are defined. This guideline is intended to establish an alternative to the currently valid specifications of EN 1991-2, enabling the damping factor of railway bridges to be assessed in a realistic range by mathematical calculation and thus without the need for extensive in situ measurements on the individual structure. In this way, the existing potential of the infrastructure with regard to the damping properties of bridges can be utilised. This contribution focuses on steel bridges, but the mathematical approach for determining the damping factor applies equally to other bridge types (concrete, composite, or filler beam).