Investigation of Longitudinal Interaction of Track and Railway Bridge

The use of Continuous Welded Rail (CWR) is a requirement of high-speed rail. Factors such as temperature change, bending of the supporting structure and brake load cause the longitudinal interaction of the Track and the bridge and create a lot of longitudinal force in the rail; Since the presence of bridges in the route of the track is inevitable, so it is necessary to study the longitudinal interaction of the track-bridge in the railway bridges. In this paper, finite element modeling of the track-bridge longitudinal interaction phenomenon is developed and validated in the case of nonlinear longitudinal stiffness. In order to investigate a real problem, Izadkhast Railway Bridge with a continuous welded rail located on the Isfahan-Shiraz railway has been selected and the phenomenon of longitudinal interaction of the track-bridge has been studied with a definite approach. In this approach, the stresses generated in the rail due to the longitudinal interaction of the track-bridge due to changes in bridge temperature, braking load and bending of the support structure are obtained by considering the wide nonlinear longitudinal stiffness and are controlled with allowable values. Parametric analysis of bridge temperature, vertical load application position, maximum elastic displacement and thermal expansion coefficient has also been performed. Maximum longitudinal stresses occurred while the third span of the bridge was loaded.