Keywords: crossing, turnout, measurements, multibody simulations, dynamic vehicle-track interaction, calibration.

This paper presents an iterative simulation methodology to compute long-term deterioration in crossing panels. The methodology takes turnout type, initial conditions and traffic load into consideration to compute the long-term change in ballast settlement and crossing geometry deterioration. The model also provides outputs in the form of structural loading such as sleeper-ballast contact pressures and bending moments in sleepers and crossing. In the methodology, the dynamic vehicle-track interaction is simulated using an MBS model with a finite element model of the crossing panel structure. To allow for computationally efficient simulation of long-term deterioration, phenomenological damage models are used. Settlements are computed using the Sato threshold model and the crossing geometry change is computed using a novel damage model derived using historical crossing geometry measurements. The methodology is demonstrated for a switch & crossing demonstrator installed in the Austrian railway network as a part of the European research programme Shift2Rail, and the measured crossing geometry change after 26 months of traffic is compared to model predictions

download the full-text of this paper (PDF, 1363 Kb)

go to the previous paper
go to the next paper
return to the table of contents
return to the volume description