Technology of crushed stone ballast cleaning

Abstract

The article analyzes the influence of various factors on the application of the technology of crushed stone ballast clearing. A model of a ballast prism composed of crushed stone of various fractions in the form of an elastic isotropic flat layer of varying thickness, bounded around the perimeter by a contour of arbitrary shape, is considered. Criteria for evaluating crushed stone ballast cleaning technologies are given: performance of a ballast cleaning machine - estimated by operating speed, volume of cut out and cleaned ballast (per hour) and depends on the initial state of the path superstructure, initial contamination and ballast moisture, cutting depth and width of the ballast; technical characteristics of the screen, bar chain, conveyor system; quality of ballast cleaning - depends on the initial state of the ballast layer (moisture, debris), surface area and angle of screen inclination, amplitude and frequency of vibration of the screen; the purity of rubble that is returned on the way, also depends on the effectiveness of protection against weed spills on conveyors and bunkers with clean rubble, and protection against the spill of weeds from the machine onto the ballast prism after it has been cleaned. The choice of a variant of the production technology for ballast cleaning is also based on an analysis of the condition of the path before and after repair and reduces, as a rule, to the formation of a chain of heavy track machines. Analysis of the application of crushed stone ballast cleaning technology, taking into account a set of technical, operational features of the repair site, technical characteristics of track machines for deep cleaning of crushed stone ballast, as well as technological and production requirements for various types of the path repair, showed the need for further study of this issue to reduce operating costs for Russian Railways.