Laboratory study of ballast material reinforced by flat geogrid under the dynamic load

摘要

Ballast material suffers from continuous degradation under cyclic load. This leads to rail track settlement and necessitates its constant maintenance. It is serious problem that costs Russia millions of dollars every year. Easily accessible plastic geogrid was proposed to reinforce ballast and to prevent its rapid degradation. However, the optimal parameters of geogrid (its mesh size, geometry and number of layers) remains an open question. In current work effects of number of geogrid layers and geogrid mesh size on ballast settlement are studied by laboratory dynamic load tests.