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Unsaturated Hydraulic Properties of Fine Particles of Fouled Ballast Layer from an Ancient Railway Track Beds

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Unsaturated Soils: Research and Applications

Abstract

The ancient railways in France, which was initially built by emplacing ballasts directly on the subgrade soils without a separation layer as that for new railway lines, are facing to various problems that affect the stability of trackbed and thus the proper circulation of trains. One of these problems is related to the loss of efficiency in water drainage of the track. Actually, fouled ballast has been formed progressively along the life time of the track mainly due to the infiltration of fine particles of subgrade layer into the ballast layer. In this study, the hydraulic properties of these fine particles investigated. Soil taken from a fouled ballast layer of a rail track was first sieved at 2 mm and then re-compacted to its initial in-situ dry density. The water retention curve and the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity were finally analyzed.

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Correspondence to Trong Vinh Duong .

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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg

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Duong, T.V. et al. (2012). Unsaturated Hydraulic Properties of Fine Particles of Fouled Ballast Layer from an Ancient Railway Track Beds. In: Mancuso, C., Jommi, C., D’Onza, F. (eds) Unsaturated Soils: Research and Applications. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31343-1_36

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31343-1_36

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-31342-4

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-31343-1

  • eBook Packages: EngineeringEngineering (R0)

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