Predicting the rail creeping and track buckling by wide-area 2-D FEM of railway tracks using GIS data

Abstract

Detailed and quantitative prediction of rail creeping (longitudinal displacement) is important for improving safety against track buckling and reducing management costs. In this paper, a horizontal two-dimensional static elasto-plastic FEM analysis program for rail track is developed. Then, a coupled analysis of this program with an existing rail temperature prediction model is proposed to analytically predict the occurrence of rail creeping and track buckling. The validity of the developed program was confirmed by comparison with an existing one-dimensional analysis model. In addition, it was found that the developed program was able to analyze the behavior before track buckling and the buckling temperature T_A with the same level of accuracy as the existing buckling analysis model. Furthermore, since corner breakage in curves was a problem in the analysis using GIS line data of railway, we proposed a smoothing method which replaces corner breakage with a circular arc of radius R and then performs moving average, and confirmed its effectiveness.