Experimental Investigation of Frictional Sleeper Effect on the Lateral Resistance of Railway Track

Welding rail joints in Curves with radius less than 400 meters is not applicable. Consequently, maintenance costs in many old-fashioned railway tracks increases rapidly. Moreover, destruction of track components, plastic deformation and critical cracks to the rail head, fractures in sleepers, failure in fasteners, ballast bed damage and lateral movement of railway track occur in rail joints. There are many methods to increase the lateral resistance of the railway track such as changing the type of sleepers, changing sleeper intervals and employing new technologies. The new frictional sleeper is designed with cross-wise ridges at the underside to utilize more of the high internal friction potential of the crushed stone ballast by forming a coarse toothing with adequate dimensions. Since the lateral resistance of a standard mono block concrete sleeper in a ballast bed mainly consists of the frictional forces between the ballast stones and the sleeper bottom, this article will investigate the changes in lateral resistance of railway track by employing STPT test on frictional sleeper and comparing the results with standard sleeper. An experiment has been directed on a track with and without frictional sleepers in SRE LABIUST and it has been found that the lateral resistance of the railway track increases %59.1 by using frictional sleepers. According to the test results rail joints in curves with radius less than 400 meters can be welded by employing frictional sleepers.