Optimization of longitudinal viscous dampers for a freight railway cable-stayed bridge under braking forces

Under braking forces of a freight train, there are great longitudinal structural responses of a large freight railway cable-stayed bridge. To alleviate such adverse reactions, viscous dampers are required, whose parametric selection is one of important and arduous researches. Based on the longitudinal dynamics vehicle model, responses of a cable-stayed bridge are investigated under various cases. It shows that there is a notable effect of initial braking speeds and locations of a freight train on the structural responses. Under the most unfavorable braking condition, the parameter sensitivity analyses of viscous dampers are systematically performed. Meanwhile, a mixing method called BPNN-NSGA-II, combining the Back Propagation neural network (BPNN) and Non-Dominated Sorting Genetic Algorithm With Elitist Strategy (NSGA-II), is employed to optimize parameters of viscous dampers. The result shows that: 1. the relationships between the parameters of viscous dampers and the key longitudinal responses of the bridge are high nonlinear, which are completely different from each other; 2. the longitudinal displacement of the bridge main girder significantly decreases by the optimized viscous dampers.