Power cars and vehicle-bridge-interaction in the dynamic calculation of railway bridges

In the dynamic calculation of railway bridges, the passing trains can be modelled in various ways. If a multi-body-system consisting of sprung and damped masses is chosen as a vehicle model, the vehicle-bridge-interaction due to excited masses is taken into account in the calculation. Multiple scientific studies have been carried out in order to evaluate this effect in comparison to simpler vehicle models consisting of moving single loads. Many of these studies omit the power cars in order to achieve a consistent excitation of the bridge. In this article, the influence of the power cars on the dynamic response of simply supported concrete and steel bridges is analysed. Furthermore, it examines whether the scientific results of studies dealing with the vehicle-bridge-interaction for train models omitting the power car can also be applied to a realistic situation with trains including power cars. Therefore, dynamic calculations are carried out for a parametric field of simply supported bridges and the Austrian high speed train Railjet.