DAMAGE ANALYSIS AND SEISMIC DESIGN OF RAILWAY STRUCTURES FOR HYOGOKEN-NANBU (KOBE) EARTHQUAKE

Abstract

The devastation wrought on railway structures by the 1995 Hyogoken-Nanbu earthquake has shown that there is an urgent need for developing a new seismic design of railway structures. After the earthquake, many groups set to investigate the reasons for the damage using static and dynamic analyses. This paper presents causes of seismically induced damage to bridges elucidated by some of these analyses of the earthquake, a contemporary seismic design method for railway structures, and issues related to the new seismic design method.