Investigation on Additional Stresses on Railway Track Elements Due to the Soil Defects

Abstract

According to decrease the life time span of the railway track elements compared to the designed life time span, it must be to search for reasons that lead to this problem. One of the important reasons is the settlement that may happened in the soil existed beneath the track (subgrade layer). This settlement is due to many reasons such as; excavation works, failure of the retaining walls of the track, change in the ground water level or settlement in the civil works under the track as pipes, box culverts, tunnels, vault or etc.

The following methodology was applied:

1- Studying the previous researches related to the thesis topics. 2- Determining the effective and affected factors concerning to the settlement happened in subgrade layer. 3- Using finite element software program (ANSYS) to analyze some cases study due to settlement of subgrade soil. 4- Obtaining the conclusions and recommendations. The railway track is modeled by FEM using software program ANSYS Workbench V.14.0.