2024 Volume 80 Issue 15 Article ID: 23-15007
Behavior of the rail neutral temperature due to the movement of an object shadow driven by diurnal motion of the sun is discussed. For this purpose, theoretical steady-state solutions are derived for two simple track longitudinal resistance models of the rigid plastic and the linear elastic models. A numerical method is also applied to the present problem. Simulation with this method consists of two problems: the rail thermal analysis considering the time variation of both weather and solar radiation, and the mechanical analysis of rail tangential displacement considering the nonlinearity in the track resistance. Based on these analyses, some fundamental characteristics of the rail neutral temperature are investigated. It is found that the movement of shadow is very important for evaluation of the neutral temperature.
