Experimental determination of the longitudinal pier stiffness of a long railway viaduct

Abstract

Track–bridge interaction plays a decisive role in the design of long railway bridges due to the high braking and acceleration forces that occur and the fact that the continuous rail is attached to the superstructure. A fundamental parameter for the calculation of the effects of track–bridge interaction is the equivalent longitudinal stiffness of piers and abutments with fixed bearings. The equivalent horizontal stiffness is commonly calculated using a pile group model. The static and “dynamic” stiffnesses of the Itz valley railway viaduct were determined experimentally by using a static diagnostic load test and a braking test, which allowed for the verification of the additional rail stresses and the bearing forces with realistic input parameters. Furthermore, numerical 3D FE analyses of the deep foundation system were carried out to provide class-A predictions of the experimental results. In this article, the experimental setup and the execution and evaluation of the two tests are presented. A comparison of the experimental results and the numerical predictions is also carried out.