Lateral resistance of polyurethane-reinforced ballast with the application of new bonding schemes: Laboratory tests and discrete element simulations. (10th October 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Jing, Guoqing; Zhang, Xu; Jia, Wenli
• Is Part Of: Construction & building materials. Volume 221(2019)
• Page Start: 627
• Page End: 636
• Publication Date: 2019-10-10
• Subjects: High-speed railway -- Ballast -- Polyurethane -- Discrete element method -- Lateral resistance -- Single sleeper pull-out test; Building materials -- Periodicals; 624.18
• DOI: 10.1016/j.conbuildmat.2019.06.114
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0950-0618

Abstract

Highlights: New bonding schemes were proposed for mitigating ballast flight with polyurethane. Single sleeper pull-out tests were performed on polyurethane-reinforced ballast. DEM simulations with realistic particle shapes and parallel bonds were presented. Mechanisms of ballast resistance improvement due to polyurethane were analyzed. Abstract: To mitigate the ballast flight risk in the high-speed railway, this paper presents three new polyurethane bonding schemes which have negligible influence to tamping operations. With the application of these bonding schemes, a series of laboratory tests indicated that the polyurethane-reinforced ballast exhibited much larger lateral resistance than the ordinary ballast by 31% at least. Discrete element simulation results further demonstrated that the polyurethane improved the load-bearing capacity of the ballast at the particle scale through effectively restraining the particle movement. Therefore, the proposed bonding schemes ensure adequate lateral ballast resistance and are effective measures for improving the ballast performance.