Experimental Investigations on Rail Creep Resistance by Considering Four Different Types of Concrete Sleeper Fastening Systems in Ballasted Tracks

Fastening systems, as one of the main components of railway superstructure, play an important role in providing the safety of railway tracks. Nowadays, the performance of railway tracks in design and construction of new lines by using the different types of fastening systems have been increased. According to the variety of fastening systems, their performance should be evaluated. In elastic fastening systems, the deformation of fastener due to the moving trains returns to its original state after unloading. Therefore, the elastic behavior of these fasteners provides the better performance for railway tracks which this issue causes to use these elastic fasteners in high speed and heavy-haul railway tracks. In this paper, in order to investigation on the performance of railway fastening systems and their creep deformations, the rail creep resistance has been investigated by implementing the fastening longitudinal resistance tests. Rail creep resistance is the movement of rail rather than sleeper under the longitudinal loading. For this purpose after creating a rigid support for sleeper, rail was loaded in its direction and the longitudinal force-displacement values have been recorded. In this paper, fastening longitudinal resistance tests have been implemented on the different fasteners including Pandrol e-Clip, Vossloh, K and KS in same conditions. Based on the obtained results, the Pandrol e-Clip fastener has had the most longitudinal restraint and the least residual strain and also the rigid fastener of K has shown the most residual deformation.