Advances in Constructional Engineering

Through observation, it has been found that there are certain irrationality in the evaluation criteria of high-speed railways at present, which is manifested as only having two options: "maintenance" or "no maintenance". This "one size fits all" evaluation method has obvious defects for high-speed railways with diverse objectives. Even if research attempts to combine TQI with settlement observation and other methods, there may be issues with non convergence of evaluation results such as "TQI exceeding limit but settlement not exceeding limit" or "TQI not exceeding limit but settlement exceeding limit", which has limited guidance on speed limit adjustment and maintenance and repair. Therefore, this paper will take the Shanghai–Nanjing intercity railway as an example, by introducing the concept of engineering vulnerability, in order to achieve a comprehensive evaluation considering structural damage, functional loss and line maintenance, and provide suggestions for reference for the correct assessment of line health status and actual maintenance and repair programs.

Concept of engineering vulnerability; Health status assessment; Line maintenance