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Dynamic analysis of railway with locally continuous supported superstructures

Muzaffer Metin (Department of Mechanical Engineering, Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey)
Arif Ulu (Department of Mechanical Engineering, Istanbul Aydin University, Istanbul, Turkey)
Ozgur Demir (Department of Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering, Yildiz Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey)
Aytac Arikoglu (Department of Aeronautical Engineering, Istanbul Technical University, Istanbul, Turkey)

Engineering Computations

ISSN: 0264-4401

Article publication date: 7 August 2019

Issue publication date: 19 November 2019

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Abstract

Purpose

In this study, a railway superstructure is modeled with a new approach called locally continuous supporting, and its behavior under the effect of moving load is analyzed by using analytical and numerical techniques. The purpose of the study is to demonstrate the success of the new modeling technique.

Design/methodology/approach

In the railway superstructure, the support zones are not modeled with discrete spring-damping elements. Instead of this, it is considered to be a continuous viscoelastic structure in the local areas. To model this approach, the governing partial differential equations are derived by Hamilton’s principle and spatially discretized by the Galerkin’s method, and the time integration of the resulting ordinary differential equation system is carried out by the Newmark–Beta method.

Findings

Both the proposed model and the solution technique are verified against conventional one-dimensional and three-dimensional finite element models for a specific case, and a very good agreement between the results is observed. The effects of geometric, structural, and loading parameters such as rail-pad length, rail-pad stiffness, rail-pad damping ratio, the gap between rail pads and vehicle speed on the dynamic response of railway superstructure are investigated in detail.

Originality/value

There are mainly two approaches to the modeling of rail pads. The first approach considers them as a single spring-damper connected in parallel located at the centroid of the rail pad. The second one divides the rail pad into several parts, with each of part represented by an equivalent spring-damper system. To obtain realistic results with minimum CPU time for the dynamic response of railway superstructure, the rail pads are modeled as continuous linearly viscoelastic local supports. The mechanical model of viscoelastic material is considered as a spring and damper connected in parallel.

Keywords

Acknowledgements

The financial support of the Program for Scientific and Technological Research Projects (1001) by the Scientific and Technical Research Council of Turkey (TUBITAK) (Project No: 115M586) is gratefully acknowledged.

Citation

Metin, M., Ulu, A., Demir, O. and Arikoglu, A. (2019), "Dynamic analysis of railway with locally continuous supported superstructures", Engineering Computations, Vol. 36 No. 9, pp. 3047-3069. https://doi.org/10.1108/EC-02-2019-0041

Publisher

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Emerald Publishing Limited

Copyright © 2019, Emerald Publishing Limited

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