Management of stresses in the rails on railway bridges

This paper analyses the stresses in continuous welded rails on bridges including the aspect of fatigue of rail steel. Furthermore, it examines the possibility to avoid rail expansion joints, while simultaneously exploiting the permissible stress capacity of the rail profile 60E1. Accordingly, general application of permissible values of pressure and tensilestresses prescribed in the current European standards was critically analysed. Paper includes specific application aspects of the prescribed stress values for railway bridges in Serbia. General algorithm for reducing the stresses due to the vehicle/track/bridge interaction, which is presented in this paper, was developed by the authors. This algorithm includes all essential parameters of the bridge structure and railway superstructure, as well as the influence of climate conditions and railway route design.