• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.4A
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• pp.707-717
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• 2006

As an alternative to conventional prestressed concrete (PSC) girders, various types of PSC girders are either under development or have already been applied in bridge structures. Incrementally prestressed concrete girder is one of these newly developed girders. According to the design concept, these new types of PSC girders have the advantages of requiring less self-weight while having the capability of longer spans. However, the dynamic interaction between bridge superstructures and passing trains is one of the critical issues concerning these railway bridges designed with more flexibility. Therefore, it is very important to evaluate modal parameters of newly designed bridges before doing dynamic analyses. In the present paper, a 25 meters long full scale PSC girder was fabricated as a test specimen and modal testing was carried out to evaluate modal parameters including natural frequencies and modal damping ratios at every prestressing stage. During the modal testing, a digitally controlled vibration exciter as well as an impact hammer is applied, in order to obtain precise frequency response functions and the modal parameters are evaluated varying with construction stages. Prestressed force effects on changes of modal parameters are analyzed at every incremental prestressing stage. With the application of reliable properties from modal experiments, estimation of dynamic performances of PSC girder railway bridges can be obtained from various parametric studies on dynamic behavior under the passage of moving train. Dynamic displacements, impact factor, acceleration of the slab, end rotation of the girder, and other important dynamic performance parameters are checked with various speeds of the train.