Effectiveness of an elastically supported beam under the action of moving loads traversing in the opposite direction

The design of high-speed simply supported bridges in critical conditions, such as road or canal crossings, is a matter of concern, particularly under two-way crossings with sequential wheel loads. Contrarily to simple classical support, elastic bearings can serve towards vibration mitigation under high speed. In this paper, a non-dimensional framework is developed to understand the impact mechanism of an elastically supported (ES) beam under the action of single as well as opposite traversing loads. A good agreement with the available literature has been confirmed for the one-way crossing using the present methodology. Moreover, a parametric study is conducted for an ES beam, in which the effects of speed parameter (eta), speed parameter ratio between two trains (R), interspatial distance between loads to the length of the bridge (epsilon), damping zeta, stiffness parameter (kappa), and traversing time difference between two trains (t( os )) are investigated. The theoretical results suggest the effective use of the ES beam under higher values of eta for one-way and R for two-way traffic. Additionally, various resonances and cancellation speed ratios under particular values of epsilon have been identified under varying values of kappa.

Automated summary

This paper investigates the impact mechanism of an elastically supported beam in the design of high-speed simply supported bridges under two-way sequential wheel loads. The results suggest that elastic bearings can effectively mitigate vibration in one-way crossings and certain factors such as the speed parameter ratio need to be considered in two-way traffic.