The initial part of the paper briefly characterizes a long-term experimental activity at the Department of Railway Engineering and Track Management (DRETM). The research of the DRETM focuses, besides other research activities and specific problems in the field of railway engineering (application of new structures and construction materials in conventional and modernized railway tracks, modernisation and rehabilitation of existing railway tracks for higher speeds, track diagnostics, influence of track operation on noise emissions and design of structural measures, possibility of application of recycled ballast bed material in the track substructure, ballast recycling technologies, ecological assessment of recycled material of the track substructure), on various factors affecting track substructure freezing. In 2012-2017, in the campus of the University of Žilina (UNIZA), an Experimental stand DRETM was built for the research purposes. The experimental stand DRETM consists of 6 types of track substructure placed in an embankment or a cut, in the 1:1 scale. Besides conventional building materials (crushed aggregate), these structures also include various thermal insulation materials (Liapor concrete, Styrodur, foam concrete). A significant part of the paper deals with numerical modeling of the freezing process of track substructure (an embankment with the embedded protective layer of crushed aggregate, fr. 0/31.5 mm) for various boundary conditions (air frost index, average annual air temperature), using SoilVision software. The aim of this research is to identify the thermal insulation effects of different thicknesses of snow cover on the depth of penetration of the zero isotherm into the track substructure (railway track). The paper conclusion specifies the influence of different snow cover thicknesses, or nf factor (factor expressing the dependency between the mean daily air temperature and the temperature on the ballast bed surface) and various climatic conditions (frost indexes and average annual air temperatures), affecting the railway infrastructure, on the resulting depth of freezing of the track substructure (railway track). These outputs will be in the further research used for the design of nomogram for determining the thickness of the protective layer of the frost-susceptible subgrade surface of the track substructure.
The modernisation of the Slovak Railways infrastructure has become a challenge to re-evaluate the dimensioning of the railway subgrade design for non-traffic loading, particularly in terms of the application of new materials into its construction and gradually changing climatic conditions. The first part of the paper shows the results of the long-term monitoring of the temperature regime of the railway subgrade on the railway track structure in the test stand (the position of the zero isotherm, the behaviour of the temperatures in the design layers and in their interfaces, the temperature of the air). The second part presents the results of the experimental determination of the thermo-technical properties of the built up materials into the railway subgrade of the trial stand structure (the thermal conductivity modulus, specific thermal capacity). The conclusion deals with the preliminary results derived from the comparison of the findings from both experimental measurements.
PL
Modernizacja Kolei Słowackich napotkała na szereg wyzwań związanych ze zmianą podejścia do gradacji i wymiarowania podtorza w warunkach braku obciążenia oraz w szczególności z zastosowaniem nowych materiałów konstrukcyjnych, zwłaszcza w kontekście stopniowo zmieniających się warunków klimatycznych. W pierwszej części artykułu przedstawiono wyniki długoterminowego monitorowania parametrów temperaturowych podtorza na stanowisku testowym toru kolejowego (pozycja izotermy zerowej, kształtowanie się temperatur w warstwach projektowych i w powierzchniach styku, temperatura powietrza). W drugiej części przedstawiono wyniki doświadczalne badań własności termotechnicznych materiałów konstrukcyjnych podtorza na stanowisku testowym (moduł przewodnictwa cieplnego, termiczna pojemność właściwa). W końcowej części artykułu przedstawiono wstępne porównanie wyników obu badań doświadczalnych.
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