Dynamic response of railway bridges traversed simultaneously by opposing moving trains

Bridges are vital components of the railroads. High speed of travel, the periodic and oscillatory nature of the loads and the comparable vehicle bridge weight ratio distinguish the railway bridges from the road bridges. The close proximity between estimations by some numerical methods and the measured data for the bridge-vehicle dynamic response under the moving load conditions has boosted the confidence in the numerical analyses. However, there is hardly any report regarding the responses of the railway bridges under the effect of the trains entering from the opposite directions while running at unequal speed and having dissimilar geometries. It is the purpose of this article to present an analytical method for the dynamic analysis of the railway bridges under the influence of two opposing series of moving loads. The bridge structural damping and many modes of vibrations are included. The concept of modal superposition is used to solve for the system motion equations. The method of solution is indeed a computer assisted analytical solution. It solves for the system motion equations and gives output in terms of the bridge deflection. Some case studies are also considered for the validation of the proposed method. Furthermore, the effects of varying some parameters such as the distance between the bogies, and the bogie wheelset distance are studied. Also, the conditions of resonance and cancellation in the dynamic response for a variety of vehicle-bridge specifications are investigated.