Dynamic analysis of a railway turnout system under moving train loads

The number of passengers using the railway network in the UK has increased from 390 million to 434 million. It seems that the trend will continue. However, it brings a few challenges for infrastructure managers. A significant one is to increase operational flexibility which depends on several factors such as signalling, rolling stock and infrastructure and so on. Turnouts as an element of infrastructure are one of the key elements on this subject, where trains change their directions from one route to another route. A significant number of researchers have devoted to increase the performance of turnouts. Some research has resulted in effective configurations such as gauge widening, undercut switch blades and movable crossings. These configurations are effective to mitigate dynamic forces over turnouts. Nevertheless, they are not sufficient to prevent long term deformations. In this paper, the dynamic behaviour of a turnout is investigated by using beam grillage technique which decreases calculation time significantly. It is a combination of FEM and MBS. A similar approach is used in where moving load are applied and the solution is sought by mode superposition.