Numerical and experimental investigation into longitudinal resistance of ballasted railway track with wooden sleepers

Abstract

• Test series were done on different lengths of test panels to understand the track longitudinal behavior along the rail axle. • The 3D finite element model was verified according to the test results. • The sensitivity analysis was done to find the most influential factors in longitudinal resistance and stiffness. • Increasing cohesion from 500 Pa to 2000 Pa increased the TLRF and TLS by 63 %. • This value for the increasing friction angle from 25° to 45° was obtained as 56.5% for TLS and 66.9 for TLRF. A ballasted railway track's longitudinal stiffness and resistance with wooden sleepers were experimentally and numerically investigated. The longitudinal resistance was measured by measuring the force and displacement in the rail's axial direction by increasing the number of sleepers from one to five. The track longitudinal stiffness (TLS) and resistance force (TLRF) of the five-sleeper panel in the experiments were obtained as 15.3 kN/mm and 37.2 kN, respectively. The increased ratio of longitudinal resistance force per sleeper with increasing sleepers' numbers was measured constant. Next, a 3D numerical model was built based on the finite element method, it was verified with test results. TLS and TLRF were reported as 36.75 kN and 15.42 kN/mm in the numerical model. TLS and TLS sensitivity analyses were executed with influential parameters such as ballast property and ballast geometry. The models revealed that vertical load (140 kN) had maximum impact on TLRF with the increasing percentage of 190 %. Finally, two equations were proposed to estimate the variation of TLS/sleeper and TLRF/sleeper with R 2 = 0.95 ∼ 0.97.