When a large earthquake occurs, train services would be stopped immediately. It is a very important subject, therefore, to judge the structural damage caused by the earthquake and whether we can restart train operation after the earthquake. We developed a simple methodology for predicting the damage rank of structures by using only a few parameters obtained soon after the earthquake. At first, we conducted nonlinear earthquake response analyses of different types of structures for a number of earthquakes. Then, we clarified that the damage rank of the structure can be categorized by the same criteria using normalized acceleration (PGA/k_hy*g) and normalized period (T/T_s), when an earthquake with the maximum acceleration PGA and the predominant period T hits the structure with the yielding strength k_hy and the period T_s. We can urgently predict the degree of the damage on structures after the earthquake and decide the possibility restarting the train service by using the above criteria.

Copyright (c) 2002 Railway Technical Research Institute