Field Test to Investigate the Thermal Stress of Continuous Welded Rail on High Speed Railway Bridges in Summer Period

Most modern railways, especially the high speed railway tracks, use continuous welded rail(CWR) for the less maintenance. For the CWR track has very few expansion joints, track buckling has always been an unpredictable event and it happens mainly by high compressive stress in rail in summer period. Therefore, it is important to understand the variation of rail stress induced by thermal loads which has direct influence on the rail buckling and stability of railway track. This paper describes the experimental investigation of the variation of rail temperature and stress in a high speed railway track on bridge structure. Field measurement was performed to examine the correlation between the rail temperature and rail stress on the Korean High Speed Railway line. Regression functions were derived from measured data to determine the rail stress f3r an arbitrary rail temperature varies from 20 to 50 degree Celsius.