RTRI REPORT February 1999

The Summary of The Earthquake Resistant Design Standard for Railway Structures

Akihiko NISHIMURA


  The devastating damage including the large-scale cave-in of many railway structures occurred in the Hyogoken-Nambu Earthquake of January 17, 1995. By drawing a lesson from this earthquake, a new seismic design code for railway structure has been drawn up. The main procedure of this new code can briefly be described, which is to (1) decide the earthquake resistance performance of structures based on their importance, (2) calculate the responses on the surface of deposit layer by inputting the design earthquake motion in the base layer, and (3) calculate the responses of the structures by inputting the ground responses calculated in the step (2) and check the earthquake resistance performance. For the design earthquake motions, the type of earthquake motion caused by an inland earthquake is added in addition to the normal types. The earthquake resistance performance is defined by the damage of members and stability of foundations, which includes three ranks depending on the retrofitting degree after earthquakes. Moreover, dynamic analysis methods are decided in this new code as main tools for the response calculation and safety check of structures.



Copyright (c) 1999 Railway Technical Research Institute