Lateral displacement of different types of steel sleepers on ballasted track.

Highlights • The performance of steel sleepers reinforced by rubber layers and web steel stiffeners are evaluated. • Lateral resistance of steel sleepers is investigated by the single tie push test. • The contribution of ballast components to the lateral resistance are obtained. Abstract In this study, the lateral resistance of different types of steel sleepers, placed on the ballast layer with a variety of shoulder height and shoulder width, has been investigated. A number of single tie push tests were conducted to examine the effect of bumped-rubber layers and web steel stiffeners on the ballast/sleeper interaction. In the next step, DEM simulations of STPTs were developed by PFC3D to estimate the contribution of shoulder ballast height to the lateral resistance of steel sleepers. According to the laboratory results, the use of 3 web steel stiffeners caused about 70% increase in the lateral resistance in comparison with the conventional steel sleeper. On the other hand, DEM simulation results indicate that ballast bed had a higher proportion to the lateral resistance of steel sleepers than that of all the other ballast components and using web steel stiffeners could increase by 9% the contribution of the bottom surface of steel sleepers to ballast/sleeper interaction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]