Introducing New Humped Slab Track Superstructure for Obviating the Problems of

The movement of sand dunes in desert railways has various harmful effects, which reduces operational safety and speed and causes great maintenance and renewal costs. To encounter the movement of sand dunes, different traditional and modern methods are implemented, none of which covers completely the problems, especially the ballast solidification and line closuring as the major ones. In this paper, a new system called "humped slab track" is introduced, in which the ballast solidification problem is obviated with the application of ballast-less superstructure. The problem of track closuring with sand dunes is also mitigated by means of elevating the rails higher, using uncases reinforced concrete called "humps", and letting the sands traverse from the generated superstructure space between the humps and beneath the rails, just like fluid. To show the efficiency of the proposed system, the simulation of sand movements from the track section was performed using two-phase analysis in the FLUENT finite element software.