Acceleration Evaluation of a High-Speed Railway PC Box Girder Bridge with Slab Track

The resonance of railway bridges that occurs under high-speed trains passage is an important academic and practical issue. The bridge design code in Europe (Eurocode) sets an upper limit of 5 m/s2 on the bridge deck acceleration for a slab type track. However, the performance of high-speed railway bridges regarding train-induced deck acceleration specified in Eurocode has not been sufficiently verified. In this study, a slab track type PC box girder bridge in Japanese high-speed railway is targeted, and multipoint acceleration measurement is conducted. Based on the measurement results, the global and deck local modal characteristics are identified with ERA method, and the maximum deck acceleration is evaluated. As a result, the maximum deck acceleration of the bridge is much lower than the Eurocode limit value of 5 m/s2 even under the resonance condition. Unlike previous reports for European composite box girder bridges, the main deck vibration modes of the bridge are over 40 Hz, thus the deck local vibration did not affect the evaluation of deck acceleration.