Influence of pier height on the safety of trains running on high-speed railway bridges during earthquakes

Sudden earthquakes pose a threat to the running safety of trains on high-speed railway bridges, and the stiffness of piers is one of the factors affecting the dynamic response of train-track-bridge system. In this paper, a experiment of a train running on a high-speed railway bridge is performed based on a dynamic experiment system, and the corresponding numerical model is established. The reliability of the numerical model is verified by experiments. Then, the experiment and numerical data are analyzed to reveal the pier height effects on the running safety of trains on bridges. The results show that when the pier height changes, the frequency of the bridge below the 30 m pier height changes greater; the increase of pier height causes the transverse fundamental frequency of the bridge close to that of the train, and the shaking angle and lateral displacement of the train are the largest for bridge with 50 m pier, which increases the risk of derailment; with the pier height increases from 8 m to 50 m, the derailment coefficient obtained by numerical simulations increases by 75% on average, and the spectral intensity obtained by experiments increases by 120% on average, two indicators exhibit logarithmic variation.