Quantifying the impact of stiffness distributions on the dynamic behaviour of railway transition zones

Railway transition zones (RTZs) are regions where abrupt track stiffness changes occur that may lead to dynamic amplifications and subsequent track deterioration. The design challenges for these zones arise due to variations in material properties in both the depth (trackbed layers composed of different materials) and longitudinal directions of...

Design of railway transition zones: A novel energy-based criterion

Railway transition zones (RTZs) experience higher rates of degradation compared to open tracks, which leads to increased maintenance costs and reduced availability. Despite existing literature on railway track assessment and maintenance, effective design solutions for RTZs are still limited. Therefore, a robust design criterion is required to...

Dynamic amplifications in railway transition zones: performance evaluation of sleeper configurations using energy criterion

Railway transition zones present a major challenge in railway track design mainly due to abrupt jumps in stiffness and differential settlements that result from crossing stiffer structures such as bridges or culverts. Despite numerous efforts to mitigate these transition effects at both the superstructure and substructure levels, a comprehensive...

Comparative analysis of the dynamic amplifications due to inhomogeneities at railway transition zones

ransition zones in railway tracks experience strong amplification of stress and strain fields due to the passage of train over inhomogeneity. The inhomogeneity in these zones can be attributed to changes in mechanical properties of material along the longitudinal direction of the track, and to displacement/traction discontinuities at interfaces...

Railway transition zones: evaluation of existing transition structures and a newly proposed transition structure

This comprehensive study addresses the persistent issue of railway transition zone degradation, evaluating the efficacy of the most commonly used mitigation measures and proposing a novel Safe Hull-Inspired Energy Limiting Design (SHIELD) of a transition structure. Firstly, this work assesses the traditional transition structures, including...

Auxiliary rails as a mitigation measure for degradation in transition zones

This paper studies the effectiveness of adding auxiliary rails as a mitigation measure for degradation in transition zones of railway tracks. More specifically, it investigates the settlement mechanisms counteracted by the additional rails. Results show that when the system’s response is in the quasi-static regime, adding auxiliary rails over...