Keywords: probabilistic safety assessment, modified Monte Carlo method, short span railway bridge, high-speed traffic.

In this paper a probabilistic methodology for the safety assessment of short span railway bridges for high-speed traffic is presented. The purpose is to create a simple, efficient and automatic procedure that allows identifying the critical train speeds over the bridge and assessing the safety of the train-bridge system. The proposed methodology combines simulation techniques with the extreme value theory in order to minimize the required computational time and guarantee accurate results. Stochastic simulation is employed as it enables reflecting the real variability of the parameters that characterize the dynamic response of the train-bridge system. The variability of the bridge, the track and the train was accounted for, as well as the existence of track irregularities. As a case study the safety of a short span filler beam railway bridge crossed by a TGV double train is assessed. The proposed probabilistic methodology proves to be efficient as it allows identifying the critical train speeds with reduced computational costs. It could also be observed that the probability of failure could be accurately estimated using 22,000 simulations which, taking into account the probability of failure threshold that was set at 10^-4, is an indicator of the feasibility of the proposed methodology.

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