Determination of Railway Slab Track Thickness by AASHTO Method

Nowadays, railway slab track are widely used in the world. Although according to the railway standards, design process of railway slab track should be performed as design procedure of road rigid pavements, there is no sign of design classical method of the slab track. To respond this need, this research is carried out. AASHTO method is one of the design methods of road rigid pavement. In this paper, to develop a method of slab track design process, some modifications were made in the AASHTO method. The results obtained in this study indicate that the slab track thickness is dependent on the traffic volume, existence of concrete shoulder and subgrade stiffness. When the subgrade stiffness increases 24 times, the slab track thickness decreases 10 percent. Moreover, when the traffic volume was increased 2 and 4 times, the slab track thickness was increased 12 percent and 25 percent respectively. Additionally, the slab track thickness was deceased roughly 5 cm when the concrete shoulder was considered adjacent to the track.