Dynamic Load, Resistance and Environmental Performance of Floating Ladder Track

The floating ladder track was developed as a next generation non-ballasted track. Its structural concept is small-mass soft-suspended system so that it can reduce structure-borne noise with a very lightweight construction. A frequency analysis of the measured concrete track-bed vertical vibration proves that the floating ladder track can reduce the vibration by approximately 13 dB compared with that of an adjacent non-ballasted crosstie track. This paper reports on the structural design of ladder sleeper, taking into account the dynamic response against a severe impulsive load due to wheel flat and/or rail-surface defects, and describes the environmental performance of floating ladder track.