Czech railway infrastructure manager has described design principles and recommendations for installation of continuous welded rail on bridges in the regulation which summarizes experience of rail and bridge interaction since introduction of continuous welded rail as a common structure. The regulation covers the most common cases of bridge – rail interaction regarding type of a bridge structure, deck and bearing arrangement as well as a design of rail superstructure components.
The bridge in Usti nad Orlici is situated on main railway line Berlin – Prague – Brno – Vienna/Bratislava. A construction of the new bridge is a part of railway station reconstruction project focused on a speed increase. The design of bridge supports position had to take into account the situation of the confluence of two rivers as well as road which led to a design of nonstandard arrangement of the bridge bearings. This design required an assessment of this particular bridge - rail interaction.
Two attitudes for the evaluation of the bridge – rail interaction were applied. The analytical solution consisted in numerical solution of the system of differential equations describing the thermic interaction. Although there are very good experience with the analytical solution it doesn’t included curvature of rail and the bridge which was this case. Therefore the finite element analysis was also performed in aim to compare both results and estimate corrective factors or a modification of input parameters for the analytical method.

continuous welded rail, bridge rail interaction, bridge thermic expansion, track analysis