SAFETY AND APPLICABILITY EVALUATION OF RAILWAY BRIDGES IN CHINA

There are more than eight different design standards in use for the existing railway bridges in China, which have different applicabilities for bridges built in different periods. In this paper, the design load standards in different periods are introduced and compared; The working status of the railway is investigated. According to the developing trend of separating passenger and freight transports, by comparing the computed results of the bridge effect and the fatigue cumulative damage, the applicabilities of bearing capacity and fatigue are analyzed for existing bridges. The results indicate that the bearing capacities of 99% existing bridges are suitable for the demand of 26.5t (axle-weight) freight trains. However, for culverts, bridges with spans less than 20m, longitudinal and transverse beams of through bridges, suspenders of truss bridges and other locally-stressed members should be evaluated and reinforced due to the increasing axle-weight.