Kanpur: Indian Institute of Technology – Kanpur (IIT-Kanpur) organizes a short five-day course on seismic design of railway bridges. The programme commences from Monday. The short course was inaugurated by director, IIT-K, SG Dhande. Prof Onkar Dikshit discussed various continuing education programmes that the department of civil engineering had been organizing for quality improvement of teachers as well as practicing engineers.
The five-day short term course is an outreach activity of IIT Kanpur for those professionals who are engaged in the design of railway bridges. Also, this course is being organized for the first time by IIT Kanpur and is the new addition to the long series of several such courses on earthquake engineering by the institute, which have been extremely popular.
Prof Durgesh C Rai of the department of civil engineering informed participants that India had a huge earthquake problem. He said as per India's seismic zone map, about 60% of the country's land was prone to shaking of intensity VII and higher on the MM scale. He said that many parts of our country are prone to M8.0 earthquakes. He also informed that during 1897 to 1950, four earthquakes of magnitude exceeding 8.0 took place.
Prof Durgesh also stressed on the fact that railway systems were essential for quick recovery after a damaging earthquake. He said that it is, therefore, important to protect the railway network from strong earthquakes. Fortunately, recent earthquakes in India have occurred in areas where railway network was not very strong, like Andoman & Nicobar Islands, Kashmir, Bhuj, Uttarkashi, Chamoli and Latur. Besides, he added that railways is undertaking huge projects in highly seismic regions of the country like Bogibil bridge in Assam (Zone V), Patna and Munger bridges (zone IV) and Jammu Udhampur Srinagar link.
He also added that IIT Kanpur had developed new IITK-RDSO guidelines under a consultancy project from Research Designs & Standards Organization (RDSO) Lucknow for the seismic design of railway bridges, which reflected the state-of-art and the practice in the area. The guidelines are complete with code provisions, commentary and examples.
As per sources, Commander Suresh Ailawadi from civil engineering department, IIT-Kanpur, informed that more than 50 engineers and design professionals were participating in the course from various railways zones, RDSO Lucknow, organizations such as DMRC, Bangalore metro, etc. and other consultancy design offices engaged in railway bridges, such as SEMAC, STUP, RITES, Tata projects, etc.
The main aim of the course is to introduce the new principle to design professionals engaged in the design of railway bridges. At the end of the course, participants are expected to have an overall understanding of the seismic design concepts, procedures and current practices for bridges to enable them to plan and direct the construction activity appropriately. Also, they are expected to understand the methodology of seismic design to be able to execute a proper design; have a clear appreciation of how seismic design methodology for bridges is very different from that for buildings and introduce new guidelines for the design of railway bridges.
