View metadata, citation and broughtsimilarCORE topapers you by at core.ac.uk provided by Chalmers Publication Library THESIS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY In SOLID AND STRUCTURAL MECHANICS Optimisation of Railway Switches and Crossings BJÖRN A. PÅLSSON Department of Applied Mechanics CHALMERS UNIVERSITY OF TECHNOLOGY Göteborg, Sweden 2014 Optimisation of Railway Switches and Crossings BJÖRN A. PÅLSSON ISBN 978-91-7385-978-3 © BJÖRN A. PÅLSSON, 2014 Doktorsavhandlingar vid Chalmers Tekniska Högskola Ny serie nr 3659 ISSN 0346-718X Department of Applied Mechanics Chalmers University of Technology SE-412 96 Göteborg Sweden +46 (0)31-772 1000 Cover: Railway crossing Chalmers Reproservice Göteborg, Sweden 2014 Optimisation of Railway Switches and Crossings BJÖRN A. PÅLSSON Department of Applied Mechanics Chalmers University of Technology, SE-412 96, Göteborg, Sweden E-mail:
[email protected] Abstract Methods for simulation-based optimisation of the design of railway turnouts (switches & crossings, S&C) are developed and demonstrated. Building on knowledge of dynamic wheel–rail interaction in turnouts, it is investigated how rail profile degradation can be reduced by the optimisation of geometry and component stiffness of the track superstructure. It is assumed that reduced rail profile degradation will reduce the Life Cycle Cost (LCC) of turnouts. In order to obtain robust optimised designs that perform well in situ, the influence of spread in traffic parameters, such as wheel profile and wheel–rail friction coefficient, is accounted for in the optimisations. For this purpose, studies of the correlation between wheel profile characteristics and damage in S&C are performed to allow for an efficient parameter sampling using the Latin Hypercube Sampling method.