Effect of linear and nonlinear stiffness support on the dynamic response of high-speed railway bridges

Abstract

In this paper, the effect of linear and nonlinear support vertical stiffness of elastic support on the dynamic response of the railway bridge is investigated. The bridge is modeled by a Euler-Bernoulli beam supported by linear and nonlinear supports stiffness. A constant moving load model HSLM-A is utilized to simulate the moving real train, and based on Hamilton’s principle, the governing partial differential equation of motion of the studied system is derived. A method to deal with the nonlinear boundary conditions is proposed, the fourth-order Runge-Kutta method in combination with the Galerkin method is used to obtain the dynamic response of the bridge. The finite difference method (FDM) is used to validate the proposed solution. The obtained results have shown that the dynamics of the system are governed essentially by a Duffing-like oscillator and proved that the elastic bearings and the cubic nonlinearities of supports have a significant effect on the global behavior of the railway bridge particularly at resonance.