Dynamic analysis of railway track on variable foundation under harmonic moving load

Abstract

This paper aims to investigate the effect of variable foundation stiffness on the dynamic response of an infinite railway track under the action of a harmonic moving load. In this study, harmonic variation in the foundation stiffness along the track length is considered. Here, the dynamic response of the finite element (FE) model is obtained with the help of Newmark Beta method using programming in MATLAB. It is ascertained that in the central region of the long FE model, the response is repetitive, thereby ensuring that boundary conditions do not influence the response in the central region. In this problem, two frequencies, i.e. frequency of moving load and the spatial frequency of variable foundation stiffness, are involved. Their combined influence on the dynamic characteristics such as resonant frequency, critical velocity, displacement time history, displacement below load, and bifurcation curve are investigated. It is shown that the dynamic response is qualitatively and quantitatively affected by the wavelength (λ) and amplitude (ε) of the variation of foundation stiffness. It is also shown that the important dynamic properties, i.e., the critical velocity and the resonant frequency reduce with the increase in wavelength of stiffness variation. This reduction is significant for the large amplitude of harmonic stiffness variation.