DETERMINATION OF THE MOST ECONOMIC RAILWAY TRACK AND TURNOUT CROSS-SECTION

Abstract

The turnout is a special part of the railway track and has two design phases (Geometric design and structure design). The geometric design of the conventional turnouts is different from the high-speed turnouts, and this difference is provided in this research. The structural design of the turnout part and railway track is the determination of the layers components of the railway and turnout’s cross-section. The cross-section of the railway track consists of ballast, sub-ballast and subgrade. In this research, a 2D finite element model is developed for speeds of 120, 160 and 250 km/hr. for main types of soil in Egypt sand, clay and silt to get the optimum depth of ballast and sub-ballast to get the most economic cross-section of railway track and turnout. Model is applied to the case study of a real project of (EL Robeky- Belbis) and get the results of the optimum depth of ballast and sub-ballast layer for different types of soil along the line to validate the results from the case of pure soil.