Ballast, rail track

Indiaratna, B., Nimbalkar, S.S., 2013. The role of geosynthetics in improving the behaviour of ballasted rail track. In Venkatappa Rio, G. (Ed.), Geosynthetics in Railway Track. Central Board of Irrigation and Power, India, pp. 59—85. 

Indraratna, B., Khabbaz, H., Salim, W., Christie, D., 2006. Geotechnical properties of ballast and the role of geosynthetics in rail track stabilisation. Journal of Ground Improvement 10 (3), 91—102. 

Tracks on wooden sleepers in ballast have a relatively low leakage load that is a hundred times smaller for a ballast bed than for tracks in the street. Good electrical insulation is, however, only ensured if the rails have no electrical contact with other installations with low grounding resistance. Overhead conductor poles should in principle not be connected to the rails. Exceptions are overhead conductor poles with electrical equipment that is connected to the rails to avoid inadmissibly high contact voltages in the event of a failure. Such overhead conductor poles should be... 

These loads arise from interaction between the bridge and track by the shear resistance of the ballast against longitudinal displacement. Since there are upper limits of permissible stresses and relative displacements of the rails, the horizontal stiffness of piers, which prevents these limits being exceeded, had to be precalculated. 

Train load according to European Standard EN 1991-2 Eurocode 1, Section 6, Rail traffic actions and other actions specifically for railway bridges and approaches. Section 6 of Eurocode EN1991-2 describes a 4-point load each 250 kN center-to-center 1.6 m. 0.8 m from each point load to total live load of 80 kN/m per track. Effective width is 3 m on 0.7 m depth (base ballast bed). This equals a maximum traffic load of 52kN/m. Due to spreading of the load in the... 

The essence of railway dynamics is the transfer of forces at the wheel rail interface. The energy from the motion of the train is taken up as elastic deformation in the track structure consisting of the rail, sleepers, dry crust, ballast and soil. The elastic response in the ground depends both in magnitude and characteristics on a number of parameters, e.g. train mass, suspension parameters, train geometry, rail irregularities and soil material characteristics (Ching, 2004). 

Prescott, D. J. Andrews (2013, April). A track ballast maintenance and inspection model for a rail network. Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Part O Journal of Risk and Reliability 227(3), 251—266. 

Rail and track (39%). The causes under this category are caused by or along the railway line, including the ballast, sleepers, switches, and objects placed on or close to the track. The category also includes work on the track (e.g., maintenance and shunter actions). 

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