Comparison of Measured and Dynamic Analysis Vertical Accelerations of High-Speed Railway Bridges Crossed by KTX Train

Since high-speed railway bridges are subjected to cyclic loading by the continuous wheel loads traveling at high speed and regular spacing, their dynamic behavior is of extreme importance and has significant influence on the riding safety of the trains. To secure the riding safety of the trains, advanced railway countries have limited the vertical acceleration of the bridge slab below critical values at specific frequency domains. Since these limitations of the vertical acceleration constitute the most important factors in securing the dynamic safety of the bridges, these countries have opted for a conservative approach. However, the Korean specifications limit only the size of the peak acceleration without considering the frequency domain, which impede significantly rational evaluation of the high-speed railway bridges in Korea. In addition, the evaluation of the acceleration without consideration of the frequency domain is the cause of disagreement between the dynamic analysis and measurement results. This study conducts field monitoring and dynamic analysis on high-speed railway bridges to gather the acceleration signals and compare them. Significant difference in the size of the vertical acceleration was observed between the measured and dynamic analysis accelerations when discarding the frequency domain as done in the current specifications. The comparison of the accelerations considering only low frequencies below 30 Hz showed that the dynamic analysis reflected accurately the measured vertical acceleration.