Investigating the behavior of railroad ballast in a box test under sinusoidal & simulated train loading

Abstract

The use of railway transportation systems has been increased throughout the years. Conventional ballasted tracks have been widely used in many countries around the world. Ballast material is the basic element in ballasted track, it degrades and deforms after service. Therefore, periodical ballast maintenance is required which is a cost and time expensive activity. Understanding of ballast behavior leads to efficient design and maintenance. From the literature, Discrete Element Method is used extensively to understand the behavior of railroad ballast through box test. However, most researches in the literature simulate the train loading as a pure continuous sinusoid unlike the actual loading induced by the trains. This paper aims to show the influence of simulated loading of moving train on the dynamic behavior of railroad ballast using box test via DEM. The paper utilizes the theory of Beam on Elastic Foundation to simulate a more realistic loading on railroad ballast. The results from the simulated train load are compared with those from a sinusoidal load. The results show a difference up to 6.89% between simulated train and sinusoidal loading. Copyright 2019 COMPDYN Proceedings. All rights reserved.