Seasonal effects on the stiffness properties of a ballasted railway bridge

In this article it is shown empirically that ballasted bridges in cold climates can exhibit a step-like variation of their natural frequencies as the yearly season changes. The bridge under study was observed to have significantly higher natural frequencies (as much as 35%) during the winter months compared to the summer. This variation was rather discrete in nature and not proportional to temperature. Furthermore the increase in natural frequencies took place only after the temperatures had dropped below 0 °C for a number of days. It was thus hypothesized that this change in natural frequencies was due to changes in the stiffness parameters of some materials with the onset of frost. In low temperature conditions not only the mean value of the measured frequencies increased, but also their variance increased considerably. Given the large spread of the measured natural frequencies, the stiffness parameters were assumed to be stochastic variables with an unknown multivariate distribution, rather than fixed values. A Bayesian updating scheme was implemented to determine this distribution from measurements. Data gathered during one annum of monitoring was used in conjunction with a finite element model and a meta model, resulting in an estimation of the relevant stiffness parameters for both the cold and the warm condition.