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Civil-Comp Proceedings
ISSN 1759-3433
CCP: 110
PROCEEDINGS OF THE THIRD INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON RAILWAY TECHNOLOGY: RESEARCH, DEVELOPMENT AND MAINTENANCE
Edited by: J. Pombo
Paper 26

Deformation and Degradation Characteristics of Sand-Contaminated Railway Ballast

D. Ionescu, D.T. Fedele, M.R. Trounce and J. Petrolito

Department of Engineering, La Trobe University, Bendigo, Australia

Full Bibliographic Reference for this paper
D. Ionescu, D.T. Fedele, M.R. Trounce, J. Petrolito, "Deformation and Degradation Characteristics of Sand-Contaminated Railway Ballast", in J. Pombo, (Editor), "Proceedings of the Third International Conference on Railway Technology: Research, Development and Maintenance", Civil-Comp Press, Stirlingshire, UK, Paper 26, 2016. doi:10.4203/ccp.110.26
Keywords: deformation, degradation, laboratory testing, railway ballast, sand fouling, settlement.

Summary
This paper presents the results of sinusoidal cyclic loading performed on sand-fouled railway ballast in a large-scale box test apparatus. The apparatus allows the modelling of typical traffic loading cases and in-situ conditions of a full-scale ballast section. The equipment measured the applied load, deformation and the pressure variation with depth. The results indicate that permanent deformation, degradation and pressure distribution are a function of the number of cycles of traffic loading. It was found that sand contamination increased ballast stiffness and decreased the elastic response, increasing stress on the superstructure elements. These effects reduce the life of superstructure elements and therefore can significantly increase maintenance demands.

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