Ship-Induced Derailment on a Railway Bridge

This paper presents a procedure to evaluate the structural response induced by ship collision with a bridge, and an approach to formulate the derailment scenario in terms which can be used directly in an Operational Risk Assessment study. The structural response is obtained by finite element analysis with an impact load as input. The study only considers derailment due to the induced bridge response and does not consider possible pre-existent structural defects of the bridge. The concept of the procedure is illustrated by results obtained from investigations of two preliminary designs of the resund Link Bridge between Sweden and Denmark.