An improved algorithm in railway truss bridge optimization under stress, displacement and buckling constraints imposed on moving load

Railway truss bridges are amongst the essential structures in railway transportation. Minimization of the construction and maintenance costs of these trusses can effectively reduce investments in railway industries. In case of railway bridges, due to high ratio of the live load to the dead load, the moving load has considerable influence on the bridge dynamics. In this paper, optimization of the railway truss bridges under moving load is taken into consideration. The appropriate algorithm namely Hyper-sphere algorithm is used for this multifaceted problem. Through optimization the efficiency of the method successfully raised about 5 percent, compared with similar algorithms. The proposed optimization carried out on several typical railway trusses. The influences of buckling, deformation constraints, and the optimum height of each type of truss, assessed using a simple approximation method.