Tests on lateral resistance in railway tracks during the operation of a tamping machine

Abstract

The article deals with the conception of carrying out investigation work on lateral resistance in the course of geometrical railway track alignment by using a tamping machine. It is a continuation of the experimental work on the application of the tamping machine to the continuous welded rail track diagnosis. In earlier articles, attention was concentrated on the determination of axial forces in rails. An analytical approach to the evaluation of lateral resistances based on a continuous registration of the displacement and the force used by the tamping machine for the displacement of track on a horizontal plane (so-called slewing or shifting) is presented. The obtained results offer a possibility of estimating a phenomenon tested taking into consideration the state of the track ballast (the layer of crushed rock or gravel upon which the railway track is laid) bed stabilization, the distribution of the lateral resistances occurring along the length of railway track sections under tests, and also the effect of the longitudinal forces appear in track sections. The performed experiments have confirmed the thesis about the use of the tamping machine to diagnose the lateral resistance state in railway tracks. Some trends towards further undertakings in this sphere, of development character intended to polish up the measuring system, and the way of archiving and interpreting the measuring results have been formulated.