Comparison of railway track forms

Abstract

Current forecasts suggest that the world’s total length of rail lines is expected to keep growing. Since maintenance takes a large portion of the railway budget, it is essential to evaluate the potential to improve performance by developing different and more efficiently shaped track forms. To put this research into context, the thesis begins with an introduction to the track system and the leading causes of maintenance. Existing and experimental track forms were reviewed, and areas of potential improvement were identified. An improved longitudinal bending stiffness and a more uniform pressure distribution which would prevent ballast migration were among areas that could be improved. Numerical tools were used to evaluate the performance of a newly proposed dog-bone shaped sleeper and different types of ladder tracks. The criteria for designing the sleeper and ladder track were obtained after performing a range of parametric studies which included the variation in geometry and support conditions. It was found that the bending stiffness of the track influenced its behaviour significantly compared to the shape of the sleeper in contact with ballast. The models were then extended to further investigate more specialised areas such as joints and a problematic zone such as mud pumping regions because the presence of such regions may sometimes be inevitable. Therefore, it was important to investigate how the track bending stiffness compensates at those regions. As expected, the comparison of the different track types showed that the slab track would perform better under all conditions than conventional or ladder track since it distributed load better and prevents impact to a higher degree at sudden variations of support stiffnesses due to its high bending stiffness.

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Identifiers

ORCID for Chandr Toshan Rampat: orcid.org/0000-0002-7405-3952

ORCID for William Powrie: orcid.org/0000-0002-2271-0826

ORCID for John Harkness: orcid.org/0000-0003-0908-0791

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