Blast Load Effects On the Pier of High-speed Railway Bridge

Large volume of high-speed railway infrastructure have been constructed in China, which are very important to the economic development of China. However, whether these structures can stand for dynamic loading such as blast load, wind load, moving load and seismic load is very crucial to the safe operation of them. The effects on the bridges from above dynamic loads such as wind load, moving load and seismic load have been investigated, but the blast load effects have been studied very little, especially to the high-speed railway infrastructure.

Since blast load is a kind of short duration dynamic loading influencing structural response significantly, which often exhibits strong spatial and time variations, resulting in sharp stress gradients in the structures. Consequently, the analysis of bridge structures subjected to blast loading becomes a very complex issue and it is hard to analyze accurately deformation or crack conditions of bridges subjected to blast wave using equations. On the other hand, experiments on real bridge are so exhibitive that it is hardly carried out. So in recently years numerical simulation technique become very important tool to investigate such issues.

In this paper, the prestressed pier of high-speed railway bridge is selected as the research target, 3D numerical simulation models are used to analyze the dynamic response and damage mechanism of it subjected to blast loading. The numerical simulation method such as algorithm, constitutive model, failure model and contact algorithm are also discussed in the following contents.