Briefing: Dynamic mode couplings of railway composite track slabs

Abstract

Steel–concrete composite railway track slabs are a financially viable alternative for the modular construction of railway slab tracks and for the replacement of resilient timber transoms on railway bridges, and design and experiments have been carried out to investigate their technical feasibility. Extended findings based on dynamic eigenvalue analyses of a precast steel–concrete composite slab panel for a track support structure are presented in this paper. The natural frequencies of the railway composite slab were investigated using the finite-element package Abaqus. Dynamic eigenmodes were then extracted using the Lanczos method. Modal cross-over phenomena were clearly observed when the design mass of the track slab was changed. This paper highlights the unprecedented dynamic mode coupling effects on composite track slabs over a railway bridge. This insight can be used to improve practical noise- and vibration-control technologies through composite material design, resulting in quieter railway track slabs.