Design of the railway track infrastructure of the subpolar and northern regions

Abstract

The interest in the development of the Subpolar and Northern regions of the Eurasian and the American continent has sharply increased recently, which is reflected, among other things, in construction of railways. This construction is associated with large resource costs. The purpose of this work is to study the possibility of using “new” materials - ice, sulfur concrete for construction of railway beds. The paper presents results of computer simulation of the “wheel-rail” interaction, which made it possible to investigate the loads onto the ice base, in the “Universal Mechanism” software package. It was determined that the load was less than permissible. The technique of laboratory (with the help of a jack) and field (moving by a steam locomotive) tests of the ice base was described. It was determined that the geometry of the track was not changed under the load. This observation and the computer simulation allows believing that the ice railway beds can be used in the Subpolar and Northern regions.