Response of periodic elevated railway bridges accounting for dynamic soil-structure interaction

This paper presents a case study used to analyze the influence of dynamic soil structure interaction on the response of railway bridges consisting of identical spans and to compare finite and infinite models. In order to avoid a large finite element model of the entire bridge, a wave finite element based approach is followed in this paper which exploits the periodicity of the structure. Receptance functions as well as mid-span deflections under a moving load are computed and discussed. It is concluded that due to the energy dissipation in the soil, the dynamic response is very similar for a different number of spans.