ANALYSIS OF BALLASTLESS RAILWAY TRACK STRUCTURES OVER SOFT CLAYS

Abstract

Railway developments in Egypt have gained much interest recently. This development was in many fields one of which is railway speeds and the term high speed trains “HST” was introduced as an alternative on Egyptian national railways. HST has many challenges from a geodynamic perspective; such as the case of HST operating in areas with soft soils such as soft clays in Delta area in Egypt. In this paper, the problem of HST over soft soils was considered from a dynamic response point of view and ballastless tracks was investigated and compared with the traditional ballasted track. A track concept was introduced recently as a solution for this problem called “Deck track” but very few literature studied this idea. This track concept was studied and further modified into two other types. These tracks were dynamically analyzed using 3D finite element modeling constructed. Results of the ballastless track models will be compared with the Ballasted track model in order to observe if it mitigates the effects of HST over soft clays or not and also to show if the modified tracks is performing better than the Deck track or not. Dynamic response results of the models were displayed and comparisons were made for all track structures.