Studies of long high-level railway bridges in high seismic zone

Abstract

Studies of long, high-level railway bridges in seismically active areas are presented in the thesis. For the current study, three different topics have been selected: 1) The response reduction factor (R) of large diameter hollow circular pier section, 2) Asynchronous motion and its impact on tall pier railway bridge response, and 3) The impact of tuned mass damper (TMD) on vehicle-induced vertical response of long span railway bridges. R is significantly affected by the pier's slenderness effect. Therefore, non-slender piers with slenderness ratios less than 50 should use the recommended values. The code recommended single values for similar structural elements are found to be on the higher side in some cases, leading to uneconomic design, and on the lower side in some other cases, leading to unsafe design when compared to the recommended R values for the hollow circular pier under the current study.