Investigation of the effects of railway slab track properties on the vertical load distribution in longitudinal direction

Nowday, slab track is widely used in the world as railway supresturture because its advantages in comprison with conventioanl ballasted railway superstureure. So, design and analysis process of railway slab track is one the main issues in recent researches.  One of the main factor in the design and analysis of slab track is distrubtion of vertical load on longitudinal direction of the track (load distribution factor). In this paper, a 2D numerical model is developed in FORTRAN to investigate the effect of slab track properties on the load distribution factor. In this model, the slab track is comprised of rail, fastening system, concrete slab, elastic layer, concrete base and subgrade. Rail, concrete slab and concrete base are modeled as two nodeded beam element and fastening system, elastic layer and subgrade are simulated as spring element. According to the elements stiffness matrices, slab track stiffness matrix is developed. A wheel load is applied on the rail (in the middle of the model). Based on the two noded beam element shape functions, load vector of the model is developed. The equlibrium equation of the model is solved and load distribution factor is derived. To investigate the validity of the results obtained from the model, a comparsion is made between results obtained from the model and those of ABAQUS as a commercial finite element software. Rail displacement, concrete slab displacement, concrete base displacement and load disribution factor obtained from the ABAQUS are compared with those of the model developed in this paper and a very good agreement was illustrated between results. A parametric study was performed to investigate the effects of rail flexural rigidity, fastening system stiffness, concrete slab flexural rigidity, elastic layer stiffness, concrete base flexural rigidity and subgrade stiffness on the load distribtion factor. The results obtaine from the parametric study indicate that as the slab track element stiffness or flexural rigidity is decreased, the load distribution factor is decreased and vertical load is distributed widely in the longitudinal direction of the track. Rail pad stiffness has the maximum effect on the load distribution factor reletive to the other parameters. As the rail pad stiffness is changed from lowest to highest magnitude, the load distribution factor is varied from 0.3 to 0.7. The results obtained in this research indicate that propeties of lower slab track elements have lower effects on the load distribution factor compared to the upper slab track elements. So when the flexural rigidity of the concrete slab is changed from low to high, load distribution factor is changed from 0.52 to 0.54. Moreover, when the elastic layer stiffness, concrete base flexural rigidity and subgrade stiffness are changed from low to high, the load distibution factor are almost unchanged and is roughly 0.54. This shows that elastic layer stiffness, concrete base flexural rigidity and subgrade stiffness do not have any significant effects on the load distribution factor. So when a model is developed to calculate the load distribution factor and dcrease of analysis computation cost, elastic layer stiffness, concrete base flexural rigidity and subgrade stiffness could be ignored in the model.