Ensemble Meta-Models for Running Safety Assessment ofHigh-Speed Railway Bridges Considering Soil-StructureInteraction Effects

• Increasing operating speeds and axle loads of trains may induce higher verticaldeck accelerations on bridges, which may subsequently lead to the occurrence of ballast instabilities.This phenomenon not only increases maintenance costs but also leads to speed restrictionsunder operating conditions. In severe cases, it can also cause train derailment. Thishas been shown to be the governing criterion for the design of short to medium span lengthhigh-speed railway bridges, especially from the dynamic behaviour point of view. Despiteits substantial importance in the design of railway bridges, the conventional deterministic approachescannot achieve the desired level of safety (Allahvirdizadeh et al. 2020). Therefore,this article is devoted to the evaluation of the probability of violating running safety usingsimulation-based methods. In this context, different variables, including those for the bridge(span length, flexural rigidity, and geometric properties), for the train (axle load, dominantfrequency and damping ratio) and for the boundary conditions (soil and foundation properties)are considered. Due to the high computational cost and complexity of the consideredperformance function, a low-cost meta-model is trained using stack modelling concept as acombination of support vector machines (SVM), k-nearest neighbours (k-NN) and decisiontrees. Then, the range of maximum and minimum probabilities of exceeding the verticalacceleration threshold are evaluated as a function of train speed and bridge span length. Comparingthese boundaries with corresponding results of simply-supported bridges showed thatneglecting soil-structure interaction effects in shorter span bridges may result an underestimatedsafety of the system; however, for longer span bridges it may result in overestimatedsafeties.

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Samhällsbyggnadsteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Civil Engineering (hsv//eng)

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Samhällsbyggnadsteknik -- Infrastrukturteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Civil Engineering -- Infrastructure Engineering (hsv//eng)

Keyword

High-Speed Railway Bridges

Bridge Dynamics

Structural Reliability

Running Safety

Support Vector Machines

k-Nearest Neighbours

Decision Tree

Stacked Model

Monte-Carlo Simulation

Byggvetenskap

Civil and Architectural Engineering

Structural Engineering and Bridges

Bro- och stålbyggnad

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

kon (subject category)