Static and Dynamic Analysis of Railway Track Sleeper

The increased speed and weight of modern trains puts the components of a railway track in a highly dynamic load situation. Irregularities of the wheels and rails induce substantial dynamic loads that have to be accounted for in the procedure of designing the railway track. The concrete sleeper is an essential part of the track structure and there is a growing demand for improved analytical tools for concrete sleepers under dynamic loading. A typical finite element model of the concrete sleeper is established that focuses on analyzing the behavior of a concrete sleeper during a train passage. A finite element model of a pre-stressed concrete sleeper is established for static load conditions. The studies done with the sleeper model showed that the train load has great impact at the rail seat positions at the two ends of the sleeper maintained at broad gauge distance i.e. 1.76m. The natural frequencies obtained for a sleeper in free-free condition are lesser compared to the natural frequencies obtained for sleeper in-situ condition. The analysis also showed that the interaction between the sleeper and the underlying ballast is of great importance for the dynamic behavior of the sleeper. Keywords— dynamic load, concrete sleeper, prestressed, finite element model, natural frequency, ballast, static load