Abstract
Crossties failure and deterioration can cause major safety issues, including loss of gauge and ability to properly support the rail. Thus, understanding tie degradation behavior is of key importance. Studies have been conducted to assess the degradation behavior of crossties addressing different parameters such as traffic/tonnage, weather and climate conditions, and geometry and degree of curvature. However, very few studies examined the relationship between a crosstie’s condition and that of its adjacent ties. Ties in track have different degradation rates, and correspondingly, different conditions at various points in time. This can lead to an imbalanced load distribution as degraded ties carry less of a given wheel load than expected, making the adjacent ties support more of the wheel load than they are expected to, which may result in accelerated deterioration. This paper investigates the interaction between crosstie condition, its effect on local track stiffness, and the support it provides to its adjacent crossties. In other words, the paper answers the questions: what happens to rail support and tie condition when adjacent ties have different conditions? How does the condition of a tie affect the load distribution on the adjacent one? Using the beam on elastic foundation (BOEF) model of track, a series of differential equations were used to model the crossties condition as represented by discrete local stiffness values. Over 15,000 realistic adjacent ties scenarios (with different conditions) were generated, and the associated load distribution was computed accordingly. Relationship equations were then developed using nonlinear regression to model the contribution of the local track stiffness (incorporating tie condition) to the load distribution on adjacent ties. The resulting models show excellent agreements with the more detailed BOEF model with coefficients of determination (R2) between 0.96 and 0.98. This in turn suggests that this new formulation can be used to estimate the change of load distribution as a function of tie condition.
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Data Availability
The data that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author, upon reasonable request.
Notes
In this paper, the center tie is the tie directly under the wheel with adjacent ties on either side of this center tie.
W3L(x) represents the deflection on the defined range to the left of the wheel while W3R(x) represents the deflection on the defined range to the right of the wheel.
A mathematical tool such as Matlab or Maple can be used to solve the system of linear equations.
The AREMA Dynamic Wheel Load Model computes the dynamic wheel load (\({P}_{d})\) using the following formula: \({P}_{d}={P}_{s}*(1+\frac{33V}{100D})\), where \({P}_{s}\) is the static wheel load (30,000 lb) and V is the train speed (60 mph) and D is the wheel diameter (36 in).
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Soufiane, K., Zarembski, A.M. & Palese, J.W. The Contribution of Crosstie Condition as Represented by Local Track Stiffness to the Wheel Load Distribution. Transp. Infrastruct. Geotech. 10, 1321–1344 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40515-022-00263-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40515-022-00263-1