Study on the shear strength of reused track ballast material
Study on the shear strength of reused track ballast material
A study of the shear strength of different types of railway ballast is presented. Sections of the layers of a railway track were physically modelled in the laboratory and rigorously tested under the loading conditions of rail traffic, including both fouled and clean ballast. The study not only evaluated the shear strength properties of clean and contaminated ballast, but also investigated various deformation properties such as stiffness and damping. The ballast was tested in a large-scale simple shear mode, in a device that can accommodate specimens from 40 cm x 40 cm and up to 80 cm in height. This allows the specimens to be loaded in full-scale conditions. The paper presents the test programme and loading procedures for two types of ballast specimens. Stress-strain curves are also presented as a result of the tests. A clear difference in the shear strength of clean and fouled ballast is observed, while the stiffness of both materials does not differ significantly at small strain ranges. The stiffness of the fouled material decreases more markedly as the strain range increases.
Bojan Zlender; Cahit Guerer; Stanislav Lenart; V. Murat Taciroglu; Primoz Jelusic; Borut Macuh
5th European Conference on Physical Modelling in Geotechnics (ECPMG2024)
Geotechnical infrastructure
https://doi.org/10.53243/ECPMG2024-77
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