Railway Track Maintenance: Evaluation of Geogrid Benefits by Finite Element Analysis

Abstract

At the present time, railway transportation is facing several challenges. The reason is that there has been not much development regarding the railway track design, but significantly higher demands are imposed on its bearing capacity. This means that existing lines that already need urgent maintenance are exposed to solicitations they have not been designed for. With this in mind, it is extremely important to carefully schedule maintenance measures and optimize interventions according to the cost/benefit ratio. This is particularly true in Portugal, where prolonged financial crisis has caused a shortage of resources. This paper analyses numerically possible benefits of geogrids applications