Field investigations on the effects of track lateral supports on the ballasted railway lateral resistance

Abstract

Lateral movements of the ballasted railway track especially in the continuous welded rail (CWR) occur in sharp curves because of high lateral forces. Several strategies have been proposed to increase the track lateral resistance which most of them related to track curves with small radii. In this paper, track lateral supports as a new method have been utilized and a series of field tests have been conducted by using the Single Tie Push Tests (STPT) and Multi Tie Push Tests (MTPT) and their results are compared with the numerical modeling. The results of numerical modeling and field tests show that the track lateral resistance significantly increases in the railway with lateral supports, so that the lateral displacements of track are as a bilinear form.