RIS ID
105338
Abstract
Under sleeper pads (USPs) are the component installed under the concrete sleepers generally to improve railway track resilience. Initial development in Europe, particularly in Austria, has encouraged the adoption of the component around the world. In practice, the component has commonly been used in certain applications, mainly to moderate track stiffness in special locations such as turnouts, crossings, and level crossing. In heavy haul operation, the heavier wagons result in sturdier bogie structures, higher unsprung mass, and then higher level of wheel-rail interaction forces. Accordingly, the application of USPs to mitigate detrimental impact load consequence on track structure is presented in this paper. A field trial aimed at mitigating rail joint impacts using the USPs with a thickness of 10mm and bedding modulus of 0.2 N/mm3 has been conducted in NSW Australia since October 2011. It was found that the track structure and its heavy-duty components were designed to cater heavy load burden of 30t axle load with rail pad stiffness of 800 MN/m (HDPE pads). 'Big Data', obtained from both the track inspection vehicle and the sensors installed on tracks, demonstrate that track surface quality (top) of the section was improved after the track reconstruction. Fourier analysis results showed that the track surface (or vertical deviation) tends to deform at larger displacement amplitude and resonates at a lower wavelength of track roughness. Interestingly, the operational pass-by vibration measurements show that the resiliency of USPs has resulted in an increased vibration of both rail and sleeper with USPs. Although the studies have found that the sleepers with USPs tend to have lesser flexures, the field data also confirms that a railway track with USPs could experience a large amplitude vibration, especially when excited by a high-frequency impact force. These behaviours imply that the use of USPs to alleviate the impact force onto track substructure is a trade-off measure that could aggravate noise radiation due to track components.
Link to publisher version (URL)
Proceedings of the 13th International Railway Engineering Conference
Publication Details
Kaewunruen, S. & Remennikov, A. M. (2015). Under sleeper pads: field investigation of their role in detrimental impact mitigation. Proceedings of the 13th International Railway Engineering Conference (pp. 1-17).