Comparative Study of Realistic and Homogenized Ballast Layer
S. Harajchi (TU Delft - Civil Engineering & Geosciences)
E.C. Slob (TU Delft - Civil Engineering & Geosciences)
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Abstract
Accurate monitoring of railway ballast and embankments is critical for ensuring stability and safety in railway operations. Ground Penetrating Radar has emerged as a powerful non-destructive tool for characterizing ballast and underlying layers, particularly in estimating layer thickness. The ballast layer is modeled as a heterogeneous layer with pieces of rock and as a homogenized layer represented by a single relative permittivity value using the complex refractive index model. Numerical simulations were performed to evaluate the effects of ballast heterogeneity, layer composition, and thickness on expected reflection data. The results indicate that while homogeneous models are computationally efficient, they fail to capture the intrinsic scattering and attenuation effects of realistic ballast geometries, particularly under variable substructure configurations. The results suggest that laboratory measurements can be performed to understand the quality of the current state of the numerical models.