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Settlement response of fibre reinforced railway ballast

Settlement response of fibre reinforced railway ballast
Settlement response of fibre reinforced railway ballast
Ballasted track is the prevalent track form worldwide and with good design and maintenance can satisfy high performance demands including those of high speed lines. However, increasingly onerous loading is being placed on existing ballasted track networks in many parts of the world by more frequent, longer, faster and heavier trains. This leads to reduced windows of time for maintenance activities while simultaneously increasing maintenance needs. Therefore there are potential advantages if ballasted track could be modified to increase durability both in terms of intervals between maintenance interventions, e.g. tamping, and overall life cycle. This paper presents an assessment of the potential for randomly reinforced ballast, a mixture of ballast and fibres of selected dimensions and properties, to increase the durability of railway track. Compared with other types of reinforcement, fibres have potential advantages of: isotropy (avoiding the formation of weak planes); the possibility of using recycled plastic material; and expected compatibility with normal maintenance procedures. A series of full size tests has been conducted in the Southampton Railway Testing Facility (SRTF) to evaluate the resilient and plastic response of reinforced ballast to vertical cyclic loading. The testing apparatus represents a slice of single track extended to the shoulders and including one sleeper. A vertical load, representing a 20 tonne train axle, was applied by a hydraulic actuator with a frequency of 3Hz to 3 million cycles. Tests carried out thus far demonstrate the importance of selecting an appropriate fibre width as a function of the average particle size of the ballast to be reinforced. Appropriately selected fibres are shown to reduce ballast vertical permanent deformations by about 25%.
Ferro, Edgar
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Ajayi, Olufemi
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Le Pen, Louis
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Zervos, Antonios
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Powrie, William
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Ferro, Edgar
0791b4e9-80fd-4472-9a76-28c060ff9972
Ajayi, Olufemi
acdec1f1-e3ef-4ae4-bb6b-5f27ebd4f980
Le Pen, Louis
4a38e256-d113-4bba-b0d4-32d41995928a
Zervos, Antonios
9e60164e-af2c-4776-af7d-dfc9a454c46e
Powrie, William
600c3f02-00f8-4486-ae4b-b4fc8ec77c3c

Ferro, Edgar, Ajayi, Olufemi, Le Pen, Louis, Zervos, Antonios and Powrie, William (2016) Settlement response of fibre reinforced railway ballast. 11th World Congress on Railway Research. (WCRR2016), Milan, Italy. 29 May - 02 Jun 2016. 6 pp .

Record type: Conference or Workshop Item (Paper)

Abstract

Ballasted track is the prevalent track form worldwide and with good design and maintenance can satisfy high performance demands including those of high speed lines. However, increasingly onerous loading is being placed on existing ballasted track networks in many parts of the world by more frequent, longer, faster and heavier trains. This leads to reduced windows of time for maintenance activities while simultaneously increasing maintenance needs. Therefore there are potential advantages if ballasted track could be modified to increase durability both in terms of intervals between maintenance interventions, e.g. tamping, and overall life cycle. This paper presents an assessment of the potential for randomly reinforced ballast, a mixture of ballast and fibres of selected dimensions and properties, to increase the durability of railway track. Compared with other types of reinforcement, fibres have potential advantages of: isotropy (avoiding the formation of weak planes); the possibility of using recycled plastic material; and expected compatibility with normal maintenance procedures. A series of full size tests has been conducted in the Southampton Railway Testing Facility (SRTF) to evaluate the resilient and plastic response of reinforced ballast to vertical cyclic loading. The testing apparatus represents a slice of single track extended to the shoulders and including one sleeper. A vertical load, representing a 20 tonne train axle, was applied by a hydraulic actuator with a frequency of 3Hz to 3 million cycles. Tests carried out thus far demonstrate the importance of selecting an appropriate fibre width as a function of the average particle size of the ballast to be reinforced. Appropriately selected fibres are shown to reduce ballast vertical permanent deformations by about 25%.

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More information

e-pub ahead of print date: 30 May 2016
Venue - Dates: 11th World Congress on Railway Research. (WCRR2016), Milan, Italy, 2016-05-29 - 2016-06-02
Organisations: Infrastructure Group

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 403910
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/403910
PURE UUID: 7648d48c-332d-4968-b58b-fec45d2776cf
ORCID for Louis Le Pen: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-4362-3895
ORCID for Antonios Zervos: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-2662-9320
ORCID for William Powrie: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-2271-0826

Catalogue record

Date deposited: 16 Dec 2016 10:14
Last modified: 16 Mar 2024 03:47

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Contributors

Author: Edgar Ferro
Author: Olufemi Ajayi
Author: Louis Le Pen ORCID iD
Author: Antonios Zervos ORCID iD
Author: William Powrie ORCID iD

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