Contenido High-speed Railway Bridges: Conceptual Design Guide

The need for large-scale bridges is constantly growing worldwide, as the expansion of transport infrastructures with rail roads and high-speed lines is an important current task in many regions.
This book deals with all aspects referring to the structural conceptual design and analysis that are taken into account when planning a bridge or viaduct for a high-speed rail line. This includes the characteristics of the railway traffic such as speeds, actions, limit states, etc., and a detailed analysis of the superstructure of the track with its various components and singular elements.
One of the special features of the book is that it not only highlights the bridge typologies and structural components related to the bridge design but also takes into account the issues of the track construction. The design basis, the requirements for different situations and solutions are given.
Special attention is paid to the interaction between the structure and the track and to the dynamic nature of railway actions, studying the dynamic response of the structure and its influence on the behaviour of the track and its components as well as on safety, traffic flow quality, and maintenance needs. The particulars of the design of high-speed rail bridges located in seismic areas are included as well.
Numerous examples in all chapters serve the book's character as a useful guide to HSR bridge design, and to prevent typical problems and errors.
An appendix with selected HSR bridges built worldwide completes the work.
With this work the authors provide first-hand experience gained from many years of planning of completed bridges for high-speed rail lines

José Romo is Chief Executive Officer and partner of FHECOR, and also a bridge engineer fully specialised in large-span bridges with more than 40 years of experience in bridge design, 35 of them working in FHECOR. He has vast technical knowledge based on his design background complemented with his activity as professor of concrete and steel structures at Madrid University, and his active participation in national and international associations of bridge designers and concrete and steel materials. He is a member of many scientific committees such as Eurocodes, IABSE, and ACHE where he became president in 2014 and was awarded with the honours medal in 2008. He is a fellow of the Institution of Civil Engineers of UK. He has always worked as a bridge designer participating in innumerable bridge projects in Spain and worldwide, and also in the construction engineering for many of them. He has a great aesthetic vision that he applies to all the designs, while having great concern for sustainability and the use of new materials and construction techniques.

Manuel Cuadrado holds an MSc in Civil engineering from the Polytechnic University of Madrid. He is currently Associate Professor at the Carlos III University of Madrid and a member of the Technological Committee of the Spanish Railway Research Foundation (SRRF). Manuel Cuadrado has been working for 34 years, mainly in the railway industry, for Spanish and French Engineering companies, as an independent Consultant, and from 2005 to 2017 for the SRRF. He has participated both in key Spanish High-Speed projects, and in International High-Speed Lines (Portugal, Turkey, California), and has been involved in many R&D projects mainly related to the mechanical behaviour of railway infrastructures. As a result of his R&D activity he has produced many monographs, published several papers in national and international journals and presented many papers in national and international congresses, including WCRR 1999-Tokyo, WCRR 2001-Köln, WCRR 2006-Montreal, WCRR 2008-Seoul and WCRR 2016-Milan, and UIC High Speed Congresses 2010-Beijing and 2015-Tokio. He was also invited to participate as a specialist in the drafting of railway standards, as a member of Spanish, European and international technical committees. Finally, from December 2017, he has been participating as Infrastructure Assessor and Lead Assessor in several Rail Safety & Interoperability assessments, as Infrastructure expert and as Slab-track expert.

Alejandro Pérez-Caldentey is full Associate Professor at the Department of Mechanics of Continuous Media and Theory of Structures for the Civil Engineering School at the Polytechnic University of Madrid. He joined FHECOR in 1989 after graduating from UPM where he also obtained his PhD in Civil Engineering in 1996. During his more than 34 years of experience, Alejandro has developed structural bridge projects in countries such as Spain, Chile, Italy, and the USA. He is experienced in managing multidisciplinary structural teams, developing designs and planning and defining the scope of works. He also has extensive experience in managing and developing Research and Development projects, in Standardisation (member of the Project Team for EN 1992-1-1:2023) and in Education (Professor at UPM). He holds Engineering licenses for Spain, Chile, Virginia, Texas, Florida, North Carolina, Québec, Ontario and British Columbia. He is also a partner and member of the Board of FHECOR Consulting Engineers.


Foreword by Jorge Nasarre

1 Introduction to High-Speed Railway Bridges

1.1 Book's content
1.2 What is special about a High-Speed Rail Bridge?
1.3 General ideas on High-Speed Railway Bridges
1.4 Evolution and Trends in High-Speed Bridge Design
1.5 The Landscape and the Design of HSRB
1.6 Railway Bridges as Landmarks or Icons of a Line
1.7 Railway Bridge's Legacy
1.8 Building for the 21st Century

2 Track for High-Speed Bridges

2.1 Introduction
2.2 Specific Criteria for Railway Bridges
2.3 Description of the Trck Superstructure
2.4 Serviceability Limit State SLS Related to the Track

3 Conceptual Design of High-Speed Railways Bridges

3.1 Introduction
3.2 Structural and Functional Specific Requirements for HSR Bridges
3.3 Longitudinal Design Strategies
3.4 Design Situation of High-Speed Railway Bridges
3.5 Structural Types
3.6 Structural Elements - Substructure
3.7 Seismic Design
3.8 Worked Example

4 Design Basis

4.1 Introduction
4.2 Design Situations
4.3 Rail Traffic Actions and Other Actions Specific of Railway Bridges
4.4 Application of Traffic Loads on Railway Bridges
4.5 Traffic Loads for Fatigue
4.6 Verifications Regarding Deformation and Vibrations for Railway Bridges
4.7 Worked Example

5 Dynamic behaviour of HSR bridges

5.1 Introduction
5.2 Methods for Dynamic Calculations and Structural Response
5.3 Interoperability
5.4 Application examples

6 Longitudinal Track-Structure Interaction

6.1 Introduction
6.2 Problem Statement
6.3 Model for Analysis
6.4 Actions
6.5 Verifications
6.6 Rail Expansion Joints
6.7 Longitudinal Schemes
6.8 Example of Track-Structure Interaction

7 Conceptual Design for Maintenance

7.1 Introduction
7.2 Accesses
7.3 Bearings
7.4 Expansion Joints
7.5 Drainage
7.6 Conclusions

Appendix A Basic Concepts of Dynamics
Appendix B Singular Bridges for High-Speed Railway Lines
Index