MS 13

Dynamics of Railway Infrastructures

Organizers

Dr. Pedro Aires Montenegro,
FEUP, Universidade do Porto, Portugal

Prof. Diogo Ribeiro,
ISEP, Instituto Superior de Engenharia do Porto, Portugal

Dr. Andréas Andersson,
KTH, Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, Sweden

Prof. Maria D. Martinez-Rodrigo,
UJI, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain

Abstract

The railway transport has been playing a critical role in the globalization that is taking place worldwide in the 21st century, especially by contributing to a sustainable development of economies due to the low environmental impact and transportation costs associated with it. To achieve better performance in terms of traveling time, the railway infrastructure has grown significantly in the last decades, especially with the construction of new bridges and tunnels. In terms of high-speed railways, for example, the necessity to ensure smoother tracks with larger curve radius resulted in new railway lines with a high percentage of viaducts and tunnels. Countries such as China and Japan, for example, have high-speed networks in which some of the lines have more than 75% of viaducts. Therefore, to face these challenges, the research related to railway infrastructures is becoming increasingly important among the railway engineering community.

Within the framework outlined above, this mini-symposium aims to bring together the latest achievements, research, and studies regarding the dynamic assessment of railway infrastructures, both in terms of design, monitoring, and condition assessment. Theoretical, experimental, and computational investigations (or a combination of these) are welcome. Expected papers will cover various aspects related to the dynamic behaviour of the railway infrastructure, including bridges, viaducts, tunnels, track structure (ballasted and non-ballasted systems), track components (sleepers, rail, rail pads, switches and crossings), and transition zones. Other relevant topics for discussion will be: train-bridge interaction, soil-structure interaction applied to railway bridges, tunnels or transition zones, reliability and train running safety under strong winds and/or earthquake actions, passenger riding comfort, railway track dynamics, track irregularities, machine learning applied to the railway field, high-speed railways, and fatigue in railway bridges.