• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
• /
• v.18 no.3
• /
• pp.252-260
• /
• 2015

Ballasted track on an asphalt roadbed can be beneficial for its various effects such as (i) decreasing of roadbed thickness by dispersing train load; (ii) prevention of both strength reduction and weakening in roadbed system by preventing rainwater penetration; and (iii) reducing maintenance cost by preventing roadbed mud-pumping and frostbite. With these beneficial effects, ballasted track on asphalt roadbed has been widely used in Europe and Japan, and relevant research for applying such ballasted track on asphalt roadbed systems in Korea is ongoing. In this study, full-scale static and dynamic train load tests were performed to compare the performance of ballasted track on asphalt roadbed and ballasted track. The optimum thickness levels of asphalt and reinforced roadbeds, corresponding to the design criteria for reinforced roadbed of high-speed railway, was estimated using the FEM program ABAQUS. Test results show that the earth pressure on reinforced roadbed of ballasted track on the asphalt roadbed was relatively low compared with that of simple ballasted track. The elastic and plastic displacements of simple ballasted track on the asphalt roadbed were also lower than those of ballasted track. These test results may indicate that the use of ballasted track on asphalt roadbed is an advantageous system in view of long-term maintenance.

• Journal of Navigation and Port Research
• /
• v.26 no.3
• /
• pp.323-328
• /
• 2002

Soil-steel structures have been used for the underpass, or drainage systems in the road embankment. This type of structures sustain external load using the correlations with the steel wall and engineered backfill materials. Buried flexible conduits made of corrugated steel plates for the coastal road was tested under vehicle loading to investigate the effects of live load. Testing conduits was a circular structure with a diameter of 6.25m. Live-load tests were conducted on two sections, one of which an attempt was made to reinforce the soil cover with the two layers of geo-gird. Hoop fiber strains of corrugated plate, normal earth pressures exerted outside the structure, and deformations of structure were instrumented during the tests. This paper describes the measured static and dynamic load responses of structure. Wall thrust by vehicle loads increased mainly at the crown and shoulder part of the conduit. However additional bending moment by vehicle loads was neglectable. The effectiveness of geogrid-reinforced soil cover on reducing hoop thrust is also discussed based on the measurements in two sections of the structure. The maximum thrusts at the section with geogrid-reinforced soil cover was 85-92% of those with un-reinforced soil cover in the static load tests of the circular structure; this confirms the beneficial effect of soil cover reinforcement on reducing the hoop thrust. However, it was revealed that the two layers of geogrid had no effect on reducing the overburden pressure at the crown level of structure. The obtained values of DLA decrease approximately in proportion to the increase in soil cover from 0.9m to 1.5m. These values are about 1.2-1.4 times higher than those specified in CHBDC.