Development of Nonlinear Railway Track Model Applying Modified Plane Strain Technique
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 136, Issue 12
Abstract
The contribution of ballast and subgrade layers behavior to railway track performance is given insufficient consideration in the current railway track models. In particular, stress- and traffic-dependent characteristics need to be incorporated into the analysis. In this research, a new theoretical model is developed to include nonlinear characteristics of the track substructure such as resilient modulus and nonrecoverable strain, incorporating for the first time stress- and traffic-dependent properties of track sublayers. The new model uses a modified finite element plane strain technique which allows simulation of a three-dimensional load spread with a two-stage two-dimensional model. This technique keeps calculation time and cost to a minimum. Comprehensive field tests were conducted to evaluate the accuracy and reliability of the model. Challenging the current assumptions in the analysis and design of railway track systems, the impact of the consideration of the nonlinear properties of the ballast and subgrade materials on the accuracy of the theoretical results is discussed. The proposed technique was found to be accurate and easily applicable to railway track analysis.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 136 • Issue 12 • December 2010
Pages: 1068 - 1074
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Apr 9, 2009
Accepted: Apr 20, 2010
Published online: May 11, 2010
Published in print: Dec 2010
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