Safety of Maglev Trains Moving on Bridges Subject to Foundation Settlements and Earthquakes

Abstract

This paper investigates the safety of a series of maglev trains moving on multispan bridges undergoing foundation settlements and earthquakes. Rail irregularities, the proportional-integral (PI) controller with constant tuning gains, and maglev train–guideway–bridge interactions are considered in the three-dimensional (3D) nonlinear finite-element analysis. The numerical results indicate that the air gaps are slightly dependent on the train speed for the foundation settlements, but are almost independent of it for the seismic loads. When the initial ratio of lateral-to-vertical electromagnetic forces (