An investigation of railway sleeper sections and under sleeper pads using a box test apparatus

作者：Baghsorkhi Mohammad Safari; Laryea Sydney; McDowell Glenn^*; Thom Nick

来源：Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers - Part F: Journal of Rail and Rapid Transit , 2016, 230(7): 1722-1734.

DOI：10.1177/0954409715613818

• Railway sleepers
• railway ballast
• under sleeper pads
• box tests
• settlement
• comparisons

The railway sleeper, an indispensable component of most railway tracks, is made in diverse materials and geometric forms. Apart from sparse information on their mechanical behaviour, little has been documented about how different sleepers perform as regards track settlement. Box tests have been undertaken to investigate the performance of sections similar in geometry or material composition to some sleeper types used in the railway industry. In tandem, the effects of soft' and stiff' under sleeper pads (USPs) were also investigated. Resulting permanent settlements showed that with no USP, the steel section performs better than other sleeper sections. The USPs have, in general, been shown to reduce settlement and more importantly negate the differences between different sleeper sections, suggesting that the sleeper-ballast interface is an important variable for track performance prediction.

• 出版日期2016-9