Indian Rail Track Investigation and Dynamic Analysis of Track Structure

Abstract

The track safety of Indian Railways (IR) is become very serious and important issue because of back to back train derailment. To improve rail safety key factor is to learn from the past accident by investigating and analysing it. Many accidents on Indian railways are caused by human error, poor maintenance. The major causes of derailment are rail fracture, weld failure, improper protection at work sites, rolling stock defects, unmanned crossing and signal passing at danger (SPAD) by loco pilots. There is need to adopt new technologies and equipments to avoid such incidences in future. In this paper an attempt is made to find the causes for the train derailments in IR. Track structure dynamic analysis by analytical method is carried out to check the vertical displacement of track. The transient analysis of the rail track using finite element analysis is performed with suitable assumptions and results are compared with the literature.

Keywords: Rail Track, Derailment, Dynamic Analysis, FEM