Influence of pier settlement on contact behavior between CRTS II track and bridge in high-speed railways

Abstract

Due to the discontinuity of bridges and the continuity of the CRTS (China Railway Track System) II track, gaps usually appear between CRTS II track and bridge subject to pier settlement in practical engineering. Aiming at the influence of pier settlement on the contact behaviors between CRTS II track and bridge, the generation mechanism of the contact behaviors is primarily discussed in this work. On this basis, an accurate train-CRTS II track-bridge dynamic model is established by considering the nonlinear contact property between concrete base and deck in detail. Then the nonlinear contact behaviors between CRTS II track and bridge are investigated from static and dynamic perspectives adopting the established model. Result show that the proposed methodology is effective in studying the contact behaviors between CRTS II track and bridge. The nonlinear contact behaviors are obviously affected by pier settlement and running train. From the static perspective, pier settlement greatly affects the contact behaviors between base and deck around the settlement pier (SP) and the adjacent pier (AP) locations. The lengths of gaps and the contact force at AP location increase approximately linearly with the change of pier settlement. Even though the deformation at SP location is the largest, the deformation at AP location is more sensitive to pier settlement. From the dynamic perspective, influences of running train on the nonlinear contacts at AP locations are much larger than that at other locations. The length of Gap 2 (gap at AP location on the bridge with settlement) is most sensitive to running train.