3D Numerical Simulations for Response and Performance Prediction of Railway Composite Track Slabs under Derailments

In modern days, railway transportation comprising freight transport and passenger transport is the lifeblood of social economy of a country, especially for developing countries. Railway transportation can adapt more natural conditions compared by air transportation and shipping, therefore the punctuality rate of railway transportation is the highest. In the meantime, derailment accidents are among the most frequent accidents for railway transportation all over the world. The result of derailment action is not only the temporary interruption of railway lines but also the varying severity of personnel and property losses. There are lots of examples of derailment accident which lead to heavy casualties and property losses, such as Grayigg Train Derailment in 2007. Therefore, the research presented herein has focus predominantly on the structural response and performance evaluation of the composite rail track slabs associated with derailment action through 3D finite element analysis (FEA). ABAQUS is used as the FEA software on account of its accurate analysis result for composite construction with simple and quick operations. The response and performance of composite track slab under two design situations related to derailment action according to corresponding Eurocode has been observed. Material strain-rate property and an impact loading have been introduced to the numerical simulation simultaneously in order to improve the impact behavior of composite slab subjected to derailment loading in explicit dynamic analysis. Based on the findings, 45 km/h on the direction of gravity has been determined as the limit impact velocity for the designed composite rail track slab.