Esen, A.F. orcid.org/0000-0002-6246-2513, Woodward, P.K., Laghrouche, O. orcid.org/0000-0002-2439-2753 et al. (1 more author) (2023) Long-Term Performance Assessment of a Geosynthetic-Reinforced Railway Substructure. Sustainability, 15 (12). 9364. ISSN 2071-1050
Abstract
Significant savings in carbon emissions, cost, and time could be achieved via the reduction in maintenance frequency, capital costs of track construction, and land used. Geosynthetic-reinforced soils offer such sustainable solutions. The experimental work presented in this paper investigates the long-term performance of a Geosynthetic-Reinforced Soil Retaining Wall (GRS-RW) system as an alternative to the conventional railway embankment. Full-scale testing was carried out on three sleeper sections of ballasted and slab tracks by simulating train loads cyclically, phased to 360 km/h. The tracks were supported by either a low-level fully confined conventional embankment or a GRS-RW substructure. The substructures were formed of a 1.2 m deep subgrade and frost protection layer, in accordance with high-speed railway design standards. The overall aim was to assess the performance of the tracks, in terms of transient displacements and total settlements. It was observed that once the GRS-RW system reached its active state, it deformed in a very similar way to a conventional embankment despite the fact that the GRS-RW system is less confined than the conventional embankment. The results indicate that the cumulative settlement of the slab track, which is due to the plastic deformation of the soil, is significantly less than that of the ballasted track, which is primarily caused by the movement of the ballast particles.
Metadata
Item Type: | Article |
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Authors/Creators: |
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Copyright, Publisher and Additional Information: | © 2023 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). |
Keywords: | full-scale testing; railway track settlement; geosynthetic-reinforced soil; ballasted track; slab track |
Dates: |
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Institution: | The University of Leeds |
Academic Units: | The University of Leeds > Faculty of Engineering & Physical Sciences (Leeds) > School of Civil Engineering (Leeds) |
Depositing User: | Symplectic Publications |
Date Deposited: | 24 Jul 2023 11:33 |
Last Modified: | 24 Jul 2023 11:33 |
Status: | Published |
Publisher: | MDPI |
Identification Number: | 10.3390/su15129364 |
Open Archives Initiative ID (OAI ID): | oai:eprints.whiterose.ac.uk:201801 |