Keywords: railway bridges, train parameters, simulations, precast bridges.

This article addresses the influence of the variation of certain train parameters on the dynamic response of a precast prestressed concrete bridge. A continuous bridge with maximum spans of 35 m has been selected because it is one of the most commonly used solutions on European high-speed lines. The choice of the cross section of the bridge consisting of four prefabricated box girder beams, in addition to obtaining a slimmer solution, is aimed to optimize the three phases of any prefabricated element: production, transportation and assembly. A study of the dynamic response of the precast prestressed concrete bridge for the passage of articulated train (AT) typology is presented. Several scenarios with ranges of variation for each of the geometric parameters defined in EN1991-2 were defined, the distance D corresponding to the length of the distance between regularly repeating axles and the spacing of axles within a bogie, dBA. All considered random variables have uniform distributions. In order to take into account the increase in the maximum speed achieved by highspeed trains, the study was conducted at a speed range of [140; 500] km/h at intervals of 10 km/h. The definition of new geometric solutions for trains requires that all possible variation scenarios be covered, so this study was carried out through simulations. For each speed and for each of the situations presented above, 100.000 simulations were performed. The methodology developed in this study can be used to predict the structural performance of existing bridges and new bridges, in order to verify the structural codes requirements when new high-speed trains, in terms of loads, total length and relationships between different existing geometric distances, are proposed.

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