Reliability of a Rail with Respect to the Shakedown

An approach for calculating the reliability of a rail with respect to elastic-plastic work of the material is presented. The algorithm integrates the random nature of static and dynamic load with elastic-plastic strains of the structure. The rail is modelled as a beam of infinite length founded on a rigid sleepers and visco-elastic soil. The rail is loaded by a moving train in which the locomotive and railway cars are modelled by random point forces. The approach presented can be useful in reliability analysis of railway rails. Numerical examples have been provided.