**Longitudinal Displacement Behavior and Girder End Reliability of a Jointless Steel-Truss Arch Railway Bridge during Operation**

#### **Hanwei Zhao 1, Youliang Ding 1,\*, Satish Nagarajaiah 2 and Aiqun Li 3**


Received: 4 May 2019; Accepted: 28 May 2019; Published: 30 May 2019

**Abstract:** The long length and complex service load form conflicts with the low limits of longitudinal and transverse displacements of jointless bridge design. The longitudinal displacements of the Nanjing Dashengguan Yangtze River Bridge, a jointless steel-truss arch railway bridge, and its girder end reliability are investigated in this article. The time–frequency characteristics of the longitudinal displacements of bearings and expansion joints are analyzed using the empirical wavelet transform. The long-term characteristics of the longitudinal displacements of bearings and expansion joints in the operation period are explored. Furthermore, the relative transverse displacements of the bridge girder end are calculated using longitudinal displacement monitoring data. The mechanical behaviors of the expansion device under relative transverse displacements are studied. The reliability of expansion devices and crossing trains under the effects of relative transverse displacements is studied using kernel density estimation. The main results demonstrate that: (1) The longitudinal displacements of bearings and expansion joints are mainly influenced by environmental temperature. (2) The maximum relative transverse displacement of the expansion joint is close to 1 mm in long-term bridge operation, with the transverse rail deflection at the expansion device approaching 1 mm, which reduces the stability of cross high-speed trains.

**Keywords:** structural health monitoring; jointless bridge; high-speed railway; bearing; expansion device; displacement analysis
