Soil-Structure Interaction for foundations on High-Speed Railway Bridges

This report contains a parametric study on the dynamic response of railway bridges on flexible supports. The results are based on simulations using 2D and 3D models. The dynamic stiffness of the supports is described by separate models of the foundation, including relevant stress and strain dependent soil properties from permanent loading that is linearized in a subsequent dynamic analysis. The complex-valued dynamic stiffness constitutes the boundary conditions in a separate analysis of the bridge superstructure that is solved in frequency domain. Two different foundation types are studied; shallow slab foundation with relatively good ground conditions, and pile group foundations with relatively poor ground conditions. In both cases, the foundation slab and the pile group have fixed geometry. In the parametric study, the corresponding vertical static foundation stiffness range from 2 – 20 GN/m for the slab foundation and 5 – 25 GN/m for the pile group foundation. For the slab foundations, both the stiffness and damping highly depends on the properties of the soil, foundation depth and geometry of the foundation slab. For the pile group foundations, the stiffness is mainly governed by the pile group and the damping by the soil. Based on the simulations, the additional damping from the slab foundation is in most cases negligible. Only for relatively soft foundations and short-span bridges significant additional damping is seen. For the pile group foundations, the additional damping is in some cases significant, especially for deeper foundations and short-span bridges. Considering a lower bound of the parametric study does however result in a negligible contribution. The dynamic response from passing trains show that the assumption of fixed supports in most cases is conservative. However, the flexible supports may result in a lower natural frequency that should be accounted for in order to not underestimate the resonance speed of the train. If flexible supports are included in a dynamic analysis, both the stiffness and damping component needs to be included. The frequency-domain approach presented in this report is a viable solution technique but is not implemented in most commercial software used in the industry.QC 20180618