Development of Wide Sleeper for Quick-hardened Concrete Track

초록

As track irregularities occur frequently in ballast track of high speed line, track maintenance is time consuming and costly. Therefore, a quick-hardened concrete track method has been studied to convert the existing ballast track into a concrete track to improve ride comport and vehicle’s driving stability and reduce maintenance cost of railway track. Quick-hardened concrete track is composed of washing gravel, rapid hardening cement mortar, special prestressed concrete sleeper and elastic fastening devices. Among these components, the sleepers should be designed so as to be capable of supporting a train load and reducing ballast pressure in the ballast track, and ensuring longitudinal and lateral resistance in quick-hardened concrete track. The size of them should properly be considered to reduce the amount of rapid hardening cement mortar during conversion, and the top surface of them should be inclined for drainage after conversion. In this research, a wide sleeper including the above-mentioned design concepts was developed to be applicable to quick-hardened concrete track. In order to verify the structural performance of the wide sleeper, static (rail-seat section and center section), dynamic and fatigue test were carried out in accordance with EN 13230-2. As the results of the tests, it can be seen that the developed wide sleeper for quick-hardened concrete track met the required performance of EN 13230-2.