Long-term prediction of fatigue crack growth in ballastless track of high-speed railway due to cyclic train load

Abstract This paper proposes a vehicle-ballastless track coupled model with consideration of concrete cracks in high-speed railways through finite element method. Cracked Euler beam elements are used to model the concrete slab and the supporting layer with through-transverse cracks. In addition, an iterative method is proposed to estimate the fatigue crack growth of concrete under long-term train dynamic load on the basis of the Forman model. The vehicle-ballastless track coupled model with concrete cracks is employed to obtain the crack-tip stress intensity factor (CTSIF) of concrete under the condition of initial crack depth. The CTSIF induced by a high-speed vehicle is adopted in the Forman model to calculate the crack growth rate. The crack depth is updated by the number of passing vehicles in each iteration step, which is determined by a crack growth increment threshold. The dynamic characteristics of the vehicle-ballastless track coupled system are re-calculated based on the updated crack depth. Then, the effects of the crack depth, the stiffness of CA mortar and subgrade on the CTSIF of the concrete slab and the supporting layer are investigated in detail. The fatigue crack propagation process and residual service life under different initial crack depths of the supporting layer are discussed. Some practical conclusions are drawn, which can provide some theoretical guidances for the routine maintenance of slab tracks.