Subject Area
Civil Engineering
Abstract
From an engineering perspective, risk is defined as any event exposing an individual,machine, or structure to danger. In their function as critical components of transportation networks, rail bridges face various risks throughout their service life which can result in catastrophic failures. As such, robust assessments of these structures through efficient strategies are critical to guarantee public safety. This thesis presents a framework for estimating the axial stiffness of impaired rail truss bridge members, using displacement influence lines (DILs). The proposed framework leverages a mechanical relationship between changes in DILs and nominal contributions of truss members to formulate systems of equations that are representative of damage. These systems are solved using a least-norm scheme to determine its location(s) and extent(s). In this scheme, damage sets define a search space, an optimality criterion determines candidate solutions, and final solutions are obtained by applying constraints on the preliminary solutions. Analytical investigations of various damage scenarios are provided to evaluate the robustness of the proposed framework when noisy DILs are utilized as input.
Degree Date
Fall 2025
Document Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.S.
Department
Civil and Enviornmental Engineering
Advisor
Brett A. Story
Number of Pages
71
Format
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 4.0 License
Recommended Citation
Dalmeida, Loic Uriel Lohoues, "Axial Stiffness Estimation Of Rail Bridges Using Influence Lines" (2025). Civil and Environmental Engineering Theses and Dissertations. 38.
https://scholar.smu.edu/engineering_civil_etds/38
