Dynamic flexural influence on a railway concrete sleeper in track system due to a single wheel impact

Abstract Railway sleepers in a track system are usually utilised to transfer any loading from the rails to the ground support. A wide range of loading conditions has been observed but the critical loading condition is the wheel impact force, which is often due to the wheel or rail irregularities. The railway industry has been aware of a high potential that an out-of-round, single-sided wheel defect may occur and cause cracking in the railway concrete sleepers. This paper presents the dynamic effects on the railway concrete sleeper in a track system due to a single wheel impact. In this study, the railway concrete sleeper is modeled using the beam on elastic foundation theory. The dynamic finite model makes use of the elements coupling with shear and bending deformations to represent the concrete sleeper, and features the use of the tensionless elastic support as the nature of ballast. The parametric investigations focus on the influences of both magnitude and duration of the transient loading. Using the robust finite element software STRAND7, the finite element model of the railway concrete sleeper was previously established and validated against experimental data by the authors. The numerical simulations present the dynamic flexural moment magnification factor of the railway concrete sleeper under the asymmetrical wheel load patterns.