Research Note Effects of Rail Track Parameters at the Switch on a Wagon Derailment

Switches in railway tracks have discrete and complicated structures. Therefore these points are one of the most dangerous parts of a railway track. As an operational and maintenance approach it is important to evaluate and predict derailment probability in these points. As a train-track interaction problem, this phenomenon is influenced by switch geometry, switch structure and dynamic characteristic of railroad vehicle like velocity and axle load. Therefore it is important to run analyses that contain these factors and be able to evaluate the vehicle derailment phenomena. In this research, evaluation of the effective parameters on derailment of a wagon is presented considering the results of vast sensitivity analyses. For this goal, dynamical modeling of the chosen both freight and passenger wagons in a switch track using ADAMS/RAIL is developed and the effects of the switch geometry, switch structure and operational parameters of the vehicles are studied in derailment. The results showed that track gauge as well as speed had the most impacts on derailment while the even track stiffness changed the results less than 4 percent.