Determining the Effective Length of Railway Tracks in Earthquake Excitation Using a 3D Numerical Model

Seismic stability of infrastructures against earthquake is one of the most important engineering challenges in railway transportation systems. Reviewing the present literature shows that there are many considerable technical shortages in this matter. As the ballasted railway track is a long line structure, one of the major questions about their seismic behavior relates to the efficient excited length of the track during the earthquake. For this purpose the current study tries to find the answer through accomplishing a series of dynamic analysis using finite element method. Therefore at first, a track model with consideringthe longitudinal and lateral resistance of the railway tracks was developed, in continue seismic analysis was performed by imposing the acceleration components of the Kobe earthquake. Consequently, through comparing the results for various track lengths, it was observed that a length around 40m could be selected as a representative length for railway track in dynamic analysis which this length leads to the worst condition for track components

کلیدواژه ها:

Effective excited length ، Seismic analysis ، Railway track ، 3D numerical model