Abstract

A versatile finite element method is applied to analyze the dynamic responses of railway track and bridges under moving railway vehicles. The whole system is divided into two subsystems. The vehicle and railway track are regarded as an integrated subsystem while the railway track and bridge are regarded as the other subsystem. The equations of motion for the two elements are directly derived by means of Hamilton principle. After by assembling the stiffness, damping, mass matrices and the vectors of nodal loads of all elements, the global equations of motion are obtained and solved by Newmark-β method. Numerical examples demonstrate that the method is versatile and correct while dealing with the dynamic responses of vehicle-track-bridge coupled system. These examples also demonstrate that the influence of the track irregularities on the intergraded system is very significant and that the case of several different track irregularities existing at the same time plays more significant on the dynamics responses than the case of one track irregularity.

Keywords:

Finite element, Hamilton principle, track irregularities,

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Competing interests

The authors have no competing interests.

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