Dynamic analysis of railway track with vibration isolated booted sleepers

The article deals with dynamic analysis of a railway track in a tunnel or on surface. Instead of concrete sleepers, booted ones are used, with additional under-sleeper pad made of elastomeric material. Introduction of additional elasticity in the railway track increases both the track elasticity and resultant service life and has some vibration isolation effect. Using the infinite length beam model with Winkler supports, the insertion loss of such a system is studied and appropriate pad stiffness is derived that can effectively reduce vibration arising from the railway track. Finite element (FE) model of the track is created in MSC Patran/Nastran software package, that helps to get an insight on the track behaviour under dynamic train excitation. Finally, both the analytical and FE models are verified with the measurement results obtained from an experimental modal analysis of an underground railway track with booted sleepers and polyurethane sleeper pads