Effect of unsupported sleepers on dynamic behavior of running vehicles and ride comfort index

Nowadays, with various advancements in the railway industry and increasing speed of trains, the design of railway tracks and vehicles has become vitally important. One of the frequent problems of ballasted tracks is the existence of unsupported sleepers. This phenomenon occurs due to the lack of ballast underneath the sleepers. Here, a model is presented, in which a flexible track model in a multibody dynamics program is developed, in order to study the dynamic behavior of a vehicle. By utilizing the model, it is feasible to simulate unsupported sleepers on the flexible track including rail, sleeper, and ballast components. In order to verify the results of numerical model, a field test is performed. Findings indicate that, in the case of a single unsupported sleeper through the track, the ride comfort index increased by 100% after increasing the train speed from 30 to 110 km/h. Moreover, when it is needed to have ride comfort index improvement over the uncomfortable level, the vehicle speed should be less than 70 km/h and 50 km/h for tracks with one unsupported sleeper and two unsupported sleepers, respectively.