Title: Behaviour of railway ballast under dynamic loads based on large-scale triaxial testing
Abstract: The ballast and its engineering behaviour have a key role to govern the stability and the performance of railway tracks. The proper load bearing capacity and deformation of ballast and its short and long term degradation characteristics can only be investigated using large scale testing equipment, because the conventional geotechnical equipment cannot accommodate ballast particles containing relatively large aggregates. Stress-strain and degradation behaviour of ballast under static and dynamic loading was studied using two large-scale rigs at the University of Wollongong, namely: (1) cylindrical triaxial and (2) prismoidal triaxial equipment. Using these rigs, the effect of ballast particle size distribution on ballast degradation and settlement was examined. The results show that well-graded distributions result in minimal ballast degradation and settlement. Furthermore, the potential use of different type of geosynthetics to improve the performance of fresh and selected waste ballast (recycled ballast) was investigated. The test results were compared with those of fresh ballast without geosynthetics. The research findings showed that inclusion of geosynthetics improves the performance of fresh ballast. In addition, the experimental results clearly indicated that the recycled ballast stabilised with geosynthetic has a good potential for resilient track construction and reducing the cost of track maintenance.
Publication Year: 2003
Publication Date: 2003-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 7
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