Geo-Congress 2020
Large-Scale Direct Shear Test on Railroad Ballast
Publication: Geo-Congress 2020: Modeling, Geomaterials, and Site Characterization (GSP 317)
ABSTRACT
The railway industry has experienced enormous developments in recent history due to the emergence of high-speed trains, increasing number of passengers, and travel comfort. These developments require more efficient railroad design and reduction in maintenance costs. For optimizing the track lifetime and prediction of maintenance time, comprehensive understanding of the mechanical behavior of ballast material is required. The large particle size of the ballast material needs a unique testing facility to represent the proper behavior of the material in the laboratory. To better understand the shear behavior of the ballast material, a series of large-scale monotonic direct shear tests (DST) has been performed on crushed granite material at Texas A&M University laboratory. The test results revealed a nonlinear failure envelope for the material. It is shown that the friction and dilation angle varies nonlinearly with the normal stress.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Geo-Congress 2020: Modeling, Geomaterials, and Site Characterization (GSP 317)
Pages: 123 - 131
Editors: James P. Hambleton, Ph.D., Northwestern University, Roman Makhnenko, Ph.D., University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Aaron S. Budge, Ph.D., Minnesota State University, Mankato
ISBN (Online): 978-0-7844-8280-3
Copyright
© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Published online: Feb 21, 2020
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Architectural engineering
- Building management
- Engineering fundamentals
- Infrastructure
- Laboratory tests
- Maintenance and operation
- Material mechanics
- Material properties
- Material tests
- Materials engineering
- Rail transportation
- Railroad ballast
- Railroad tracks
- Railroad trains
- Shear tests
- Tests (by type)
- Transportation engineering
Authors
Metrics & Citations
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