Sensitivity study of a model for the stability analysis of continuous welded rail

Abstract

In 1992÷1999 period the International Union of Railways (UIC) commissioned a research program from European Rail Research Institute (ERRI) about improving the knowledge of continuous welded rail (CWR) track, including switches [2]. This research was necessary for revision and update of Leaflet UIC 720 which regulate the problems concerning the laying and maintenance of CWR track, which was from January 1986 [3]. In the new Leaflet UIC 720 [4], which was from March 2005, was introduced concepts and criteria for the CWR buckling safety assessment and it were shown cases studies which appeal to the two analysis of
CWR stability software, one developed at TU Delft (Holland) for ERRI – software called initially CWERRI, and nowadays LONGSTAB – and the other developed at Foster&Miller company for Federal Rail Administration of United States of America (FRA) – software called CWR-BUCKLE [1, 2]. In this context, at Civil Engineering Faculty from Brasov was developed a software for simulation of lost of track stability using a non-linear discrete model for CWR buckling analysis, in presence of thermal and vehicle loads, model called SCFJ [5, 8]. A presentation of SCFJ model can be found in [5].
In this paper is presented a comparison of numerical experiment results which were achieved with SCFJ and CWERRI software.