Abstract
Rail-pad is an important and readily replaceable component of a railway track, as it is the elastic layer between the rail and the sleeper. Characteristics and useful lifetime prediction of rail-pad was very important in design procedure to assure the safety and reliability. In this paper, the degradation of rail pad properties as a function of their in-service life is studied with a view of developing a technique for predicting the optimum period of track maintenance with regard to pad replacement. In order to investigate the useful lifetime, the accelerate test were carried out. Accelerated test results changes as the threshold are used for assessment of the useful life and time to threshold value were plotted against reciprocal of absolute temperature to give the Arrhenius plot. By using the acceleration test, several useful lifetime prediction for rail-pads were proposed.
