Abstract
Ballasted gravel will be damaged or worn by the repetitive train load. And these damages of ballast gravel could be increased by increasing vehicle speed. Therefore, various techniques for reducing the ballast pressure have been proposed, such as the attached pad type of sleeper bottom for ballasted track. In this study, spring stiffness test method were proposed to evaluate the performance of under sleeper pad for ballasted track. Standard ballast plate(SBP) was developed to simulate the ballast gravel and compared with the foreign test results. Experimental results showed a trend similar to the previous studies according to various loading plate type. specimen type(Type A, Type B) differences in spring stiffness according to hardness were not significant. Also, the FSP (Flat steel plate) - shaped jig is about 80% of the spring stiffness was greater than SBP. Therefore, to evaluate the actual spring stiffness of under sleeper pad for ballasted track, it was important to adopted the appropriate spring stiffness test method using the SBP to simulate actual field conditions.