Railways

SLAB TRACK BED STRUCTURE TYPE

Rails are installed on stably positioned concrete or asphalt supporting layers. Ballast is replaced as a load-distributing element here by solid material such as asphalt or concrete. These supporting layers are stable, durable and resistant to deformation and weathering and cannot be displaced. This increases the availability, reliability and cost-effectiveness of the railway line in question. As track components and the train itself are subject to less wear, there is also less need for maintenance, servicing and repairs. As concrete or asphalt slabs are extremely stiff, the required elasticities must be provided and fully matched to one another by elastic elements beneath the rail (e.g. rail pads and/or highly elastic base plate pads made of closed-pore foamed EPDM) or sleeper. Directional control bearings and/or EPDM shear cam pads can be integrated into the track bed structure to absorb constraint forces from the track or horizontal forces from passing trains.
 
One special ballastless track design is the mass-spring system (MSS), in which the track slab is supported elastically on products from the Calenberg USM series, such as the USM 1000 W or Ciprotec, and is thus effectively decoupled from the environment.
 
 

 
 
 
 

TYPE OF BALLASTED TRACK

The track bed consists of ballast. This ballast bed transfers both static and dynamic stress loads uniformly into the substructure. The layer-by-layer compaction and stabilisation provided by the ballast play a key role in this process. This is because the more homogeneous the ballast bed layer is, the greater the track position stability and the track layer durability are. However, tremors and structure-borne noise even occur in a uniformly formed track bed system. However, the use of elastic components such as sub-ballast mats significantly reduces these immissions. Different mat rigidities provide efficient structure-borne sound and tremor protection adapted to the specific project in the area surrounding the track. The ballast and substructure stress loads are also significantly reduced and the required vibration isolation effect is also achieved.
 
The Ciprotec serie is suitable for this type of superstructure.
 
Rail dampers can be attached directly to the rails to reduce direct acoustic emission caused by wheel-to-rail contact when trains pass over the rails.