What is it about?
Ballasted railway tracks in desert areas are the recipient of sand dunes and rainwater. This makes them very stiff and prone to premature degradation. We have shown in this research that how the efficacy of rubbery materials, which help ballasted tracks maintain their stiffness to some extent, can significantly diminish by rainwater based on a number of cyclic tests.
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Why is it important?
We determine the critical moisture in which the efficacy of rubbery materials (or as we call them TDAs) is the least in terms of damping ratio, after which the stiffness escalates as well. This parameter has been calculated as 10% for the ballasted tracks completely contaminated - with fully fouled ballast layers, which gives an insight into designing drains in order to keep the water content in a reasonable range.
Perspectives
I am delighted to have been in association with the project that utilises tired derived aggregates (TDAs) as an approach for improving mechanical and dynamic characteristics of ballasted railway tracks under train-induced vibrations, and do hope that the idea behind using TDAs in this project really makes a difference for ballasted tracks in desert areas.
Mr Ahmad Hosseini
Iran University of Science and Technology
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Effect of Moisture on Performance of Mixture of Sand-Fouled Ballast and Tire-Derived Aggregates under Cyclic Loading, Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering, February 2019, American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE),
DOI: 10.1061/(asce)mt.1943-5533.0002586.
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