Giovanni Pio Pucillo

Transverse strength of railway tracks: part 2. Test system for ballast resistance in line measurement

© Gruppo Italiano Frattura 2014. This is an Open Access article distributed in accordance with the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license, which permits others to distribute, remix, adapt and build upon this work, for commercial use, provided the original work is properly cited. See: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Transverse strength of railway tracks: part 1. Planning and experimental setup

Several studies have been carried out until now by various Research Agencies and Railway Administrations to quantify the effects of the track-bed geometrical characteristics on the transverse strength of the track. Unfortunately, not all the possible scenarios in terms of track components, track-bed cross profile, operating conditions etc. have been investigated and not all the relevant variables have been directly measured. Therefore data available from the literature have different degrees of reliability. With the aim of enlarging the knowledge on the track stability and covering much of the possible relevant scenarios, an experimental research program has been developed in the framework of a cooperation between RFI, Italcertifer and DII. In order to perform the investigation under quite general conditions and to reduce the experimentation costs, n. 28 significant scenarios have been identified and reproduced on as many independent track segments. By applying on each track segment a transversal load, the strength of the ballast-sleeper interface has been determined. The results relative to the first four scenarios are presented in terms of applied load vs. lateral track displacement diagrams and in more synthetic numerical tables.

Thermal buckling and post-buckling behaviour of continuous welded rail track

ABSTRACT Because thermal expansions are constrained within continuous welded rail track, the track can buckle, and does so mainly in the horizontal plane. In this paper, a parametric finite element model of railway track is presented, and its sensitivity to the variations of the main parameters that characterise the scenario has been investigated and discussed. Comparison with existing literature shows good agreement. It is found that curved tracks suffer from thermal buckling more than tangent tracks do. To simulate a track misalignment defect, a new methodology has been utilised that does not introduce, as is usual, geometrical discontinuities near the same defect, because it takes into account – in a natural way – the bending stiffness of the whole railway track in the horizontal plane. To contribute to a better understanding of the safe utilisation of raw experimental data obtained from in situ tests, a deep analysis of the effects on the thermal track buckling response produced by each parameter characterising the sleeper–ballast lateral resistance curve is presented and discussed. It is found that for current ballasted railway tracks, the minimum buckling temperature depends only on the limit lateral resistance, whereas a high value of the initial stiffness can lead to overestimation of the maximum buckling temperature, also taking into account the ‘natural’ decrease in the maximum buckling temperature due to an increase in the railway-traffic-induced defect amplitude.

On the ballast–sleeper interaction in the longitudinal and lateral directions:

In service, railway tracks must withstand the transverse and longitudinal forces that are caused by running vehicles and thermal loads. The mechanical design that adopts any of the track models available in the technical literature requires that the strength of the track is fully characterised. In this paper, the results of an experimental research activity on the sleeper–ballast resistance along the lateral and the longitudinal directions are reported and discussed. In particular, the work is aimed at identifying the strength contributions offered by the base, the ballast between the sleepers, and the ballast shoulder to the global resistance of the track in the horizontal plane. These quantities were experimentally determined by means of an ad hoc system designed by the authors. Field tests were carried out on a series of track sections that were built to simulate scenarios in which the ballast was removed from the crib and/or the shoulder. The results of this study indicate that the strength percent contributions from the crib, the sleeper base, and the shoulder are, respectively, equal to about 50%, 25%, and 25% in the lateral direction, and 60%, 30%, and 10% in the longitudinal direction. Moreover, the comparison of the acquired data with literature results reveals that a detailed knowledge about the testing conditions and the activated ballast failure mechanisms is needed in order to correctly use the test data for the design purpose.

Transverse strength of railway tracks: part 3. Multiple scenarios test field

In the present paper the design and construction choices of a test field for the ballast lateral resistance measurement, in order to produce data useful for the development of a numerical model able to simulate the service critical conditions of a continuous welded rail track, are described. Some construction details described herein allow to better understand the methodological approach followed in the design of experiments, the tests management philosophy as well as of the accuracy achieved in their implementation.

A three-parameter model for fatigue crack growth data analysis

A four-parameters model for interpolation of fatigue crack growth data is presented. It has been validated by means of both data produced by the Authors and data collected from Literature. The proposed model is an enhanced version of a three-parameters model already discussed in a previous work that has been suitably modified in order to overcome some drawbacks raised when applied to a quite wider experimental data set. Results of validation study have also revealed that the new model, besides interpolating accurately crack growth data, allows to identify the presence of anomalies in the data sets. For this reason, by a suitable filter to be chosen depending on the size and number of anomalies, it can be used to remove them and obtain sigmoidal crack propagation curves smoother than those obtained when the current analysis techniques are used. In the end, possible model parameters correlations are analysed.

About the certification of railway rails

When the compliance with the European Code of some rail steel has to be verified, the need of carrying out the experimental activities in accordance with several testing Standards forces the operator both to solve the problems related to the choice of a suitable testing practice and often to interpret subjectively Standards guidelines. This does not facilitate the comparability and/or the quality of the results produced by several laboratories. With reference to a series of fatigue, fracture toughness and fatigue crack growth tests carried out by the authors on specimens extracted from rails, the main lacks in the current standards, related to both the choice of the control parameters and the testing procedures, are pointed out. Regarding the crack growth testing, several procedures to compute the crack growth rates to be compared with the limits prescribed by the Code are proposed. These procedures have been applied to a data set produced during the aforementioned testing activity, in order to highlight, by comparison of the results obtained by them, the significant differences in the crack growth rate estimates and the magnitude of the errors that can be done due to the lacks in the standard practices currently adopted.

Development of Predictive Models for Fatigue Crack Growth in Rails

Fatigue failures of rails often occur at the rail foot, since the geometry of this zone gives rise to stress concentrations under service loads or defects during rail manufacture and installation. In this paper, the fatigue behavior of cracks at the web/foot region of a rail is analyzed numerically. Analytical models in the literature for a semi-elliptical surface crack in a finite plate assume that the geometry of the front remains semi-elliptical during the whole propagation phase and the ellipse axes do not undergo translations or rotations. Fatigue tests show that this is not the case for such cracks in rails. A predictive model for crack growth has been developed by assuming an initial small crack at one probable initiation point between the web and foot of the rail in reference to a service condition loading. SIF values have been estimated by means of the finite element method and the plastic radius correction. The results attained were compared with crack growth experimental data.

A direct technique for the homogenization of periodic beam-like structures by transfer matrix eigen-analysis

To homogenize lattice beam-like structures, a direct approach based on the matrix eigenand principal vectors of the state transfer matrix is proposed and discussed. The Timoshenko couple-stress beam is the equivalent continuum medium adopted in the homogenization process. The girders unit cell transmits two kinds of bending moments: the first is generated by the couple of the axial forces acting on the section nodes, the other one is due to the moments directly applied at the node sections by the adjacent cells. This latter moment is modelled as the resultant of couple-stress. The main advantage of the method consists in to operate directly on the sub-partitions of the unit cell stiffness matrix. Closed form solutions for the transmission principal vectors of the Pratt and X-braced girders are also attained and employed to calculate the stiffnesses of the related equivalent beams. Unit cells having more complex geometries are analysed numerically. As a result, the principal vector problem is always reduced to the inversion of a well-conditioned (3 3)  matrix employing the direct approach. Hence, no ill-conditioning problems, affecting all the known transfer methods, are present in the proposed method. Finally, comparing the predictions of the homogenized models with the finite element (f.e.) results of a series of girder, a validation of the homogenization method is performed.

Numerical and experimental investigation of innovative composite sandwich shock absorber mountings for metro railway applications

Innovation in railway industry points the focus on the production of lightweight vehicles, with high performance, in order to save the energy power and to satisfy the environmental and safety requests. To pursue this aim, innovative materials have been increasingly used for vehicle components and structures. In this paper, the structural behavior of the shock absorber mountings (SAMs) of a novel metro rail vehicle end (RVE) has been analyzed. The innovative RVE integrates aerodynamic, structural and crash functionalities in a single lightweight component. Numerical and experimental activities on a SAM prototype have been performed to validate the innovative component. Both numerical and experimental results underline that the final configuration of the SAM exhibits adequate strength and stiffness under prescribed load.