Structural Engineering

Permanent URI for this collection

http://etd.aau.edu.et/handle/12345678/138

Browse

Browsing Structural Engineering by Subject "Abaqus"

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Effect of Concrete Sleeper Type and Spacing on Lateral Resistance of curved Track
    (Addis Ababa University, 2019-07) Ayantu, Mitiku; Esayas, Gebreyouhannes (PhD)
    Railway tracks should resist heavy loads that come from the axel of a train without causing excessive defects while allowing reasonable speed of the train. Due to the increment of the speed and the axle load, the amplitude of lateral forces exerted on railway track has been increased hence, affects the track lateral stability especially on curved phase. In this thesis, variations on the finite element models has been made to study the response of the track when different shape of concrete sleepers and spacing are used at curved section of ballasted railway track. Models with four types of concrete sleepers has been developed and used and the result have been validated using field experiments. The results showed that side-winged sleeper, bottom winged sleeper and frictional sleeper improves lateral resistance by 40%, 41% and 42% respectively, when compared to the conventional Type II sleeper. In addition, three values of sleeper spacing have been used on the developed model to investigate the effect on lateral resistance of the track. The result indicates that decreasing of the spacing between sleepers leads to increasing in lateral resistance of the track but decreasing beyond spacing of 600 mm has insignificant difference. The outcome of this study reveals that frictional sleeper had better lateral resistance compere to other types and can potentially be used on curved section.