Reliability of super-slope bridge-rack system on rack railway

During the operation of rack railway on super-slope bridges (especially under temperature load), structural deformation of bridge-end is much larger than that of rack due to the difference of structural continuity between bridge and rack, which greatly increases local stress in rack, damages rack and fastener, and seriously threatens the operation reliability. To investigate the reliability of rack caused by temperature load and nonlinear dynamic interaction between super-slope bridge and rack, a detailed vehicle-rack(rail)-bridge coupled dynamic model is established with consideration of nonlinear dynamic meshing behaviour of gear-rack system and nonlinear dynamic contact behaviour of wheel-rail system. Then a field test is performed to obtain the basis dynamic behaviour of rack railway and validate the established numerical model. On this basis, the effects of temperature load, gear-rack meshing behaviour and wheel-rail contact behaviour on deformation and internal stress of rack-bridge system are investigated. Finally, the method to guarantee the structural reliability of rack railway on super-slope bridge is proposed. Results show that rack deformation nearby bridge gap is highly inconsistent with bridge deformation subject to different loads, and the internal stresses in rack and bolt exceed limit values written in relevant code, which seriously threatens the reliability of the rack structure. The maximum rack stress is 898 MPa, which exceeds the tensile strength of rack. The maximum shear stresses of bolts between fastener and rack and between fastener and sleeper are 1510 MPa and 656 MPa respectively, which exceed the shear strength of bolts. According to the calculation results in this paper, elastic fastener is suggested to be used to connect rack and sleeper, which can effectively reduce stress in rack and bolt, and improve the reliability of the rack structure.