<p>Management of continuous welded rail (CWR) stress is critical to maintaining railroad safety. &nbsp;To successfully manage the stress-state of the rail, knowing the rail neutral temperature (RNT) is critical.&nbsp; RNT is defined as the temperature at which the net longitudinal force in the rail is zero.&nbsp; If the RNT is set too low/high then the rail would buckle/pull apart and create unsafe operation conditions. &nbsp;To reduce unsafe operating conditions, researchers have previously developed guidelines for managing RNT maintenance activities.&nbsp; However, there remains an opportunity to improve these guidelines given there have been 24 derailments caused by buckled track between 2009 and 2018. &nbsp;Therefore, a research program has been established to improve current guidelines. &nbsp;One key reason it is difficult to manage the stress of CWR is because the RNT is difficult to quantify, and has been shown to change over time, with tonnage, or as a result of maintenance (tamping, etc.).&nbsp; &nbsp;Further, rail breaks may lead to local changes in RNT, leading to the need for RNT readjustment.&nbsp; Current guidelines estimate prevalent RNT before a rail break/cut based on rail gap size.&nbsp; Therefore, as a part of this program, this paper reviews an analytical method presented by Kerr that quantifies rail break gap length and identifies the roles of longitudinal track resistance and stiffness.&nbsp; Results indicate that plastic track displacements driven by longitudinal track resistance dominate, and the longitudinal track stiffness has limited influence.&nbsp; This paper also identifies limitations of this analytical approach and documents recommendations for improved models.</p>

A Review of Parameters Effecting Rail Break Gap Size Using Analytical Methods

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/JRC/JRC2021/volume/84775

2021 Joint Rail Conference (JRC2021)

Supporting the need among researchers worldwide for additional online and multimedia content, ASME now offers the ASME Conference Video Collection. This platform will collect and provide long-term access to conference presentation videos, encompassing all technology areas within ASME's technical conference and events program. About 30,000-40,000 engineers across all mechanical engineering and related disciplines participate in ASME conferences each year. This includes authors of approximately 6,000 to 8,000 technical papers published by ASME, the majority of whom also submit video presentations for our virtual conferences. The video collection will be available as an add-on to existing product packages or as a separate subscription.