Lateral resistance of railway track with frictional sleepers

Abstract

The welding of rail joints on sharp curves is not practicable due to the lack of sufficient lateral resistance of the railway track. Consequently, maintenance costs increase rapidly for many old railway tracks. Moreover, deterioration of the track components, plastic deformation and critical cracks in the rail head, failures in sleepers and fasteners, ballast bed damage and lateral movement of railway track occur in the rail joints. As the resistance of a sleeper to lateral displacement in a ballast bed mainly consists of the frictional forces between the ballast particles and the sleeper bottom, the present study investigated the changes in resistance of railway tracks to lateral displacement using the single sleeper push test on the frictional concrete sleeper (B70-F). The results were then compared with those for the standard sleeper, B70. An experiment was conducted on a track with and without frictional sleepers and its result showed that the lateral resistance of the railway track increased by 64% by using frictional sleepers. In addition, a field investigation was conducted on an actual track with and without B70-F sleepers in order to extend the results and the conclusion was that the resistance of the railway track to lateral displacement increased by approximately 68% when using B70-F sleepers.