Se-Kon Kwon, Mi-Yun Park, Doo-Kie Kim, Byung-Choon Sho, Jae-Hak Park
International Journal of Railway, vol. 7, no. 1, pp.8-15, 2014

Abstract : Recently, in the total railroad construction field, concrete slab tracks have been adapted in place of ballast tracks. Because ballast tracks need frequent maintenance and are difficult to handle due to increasing maintenance costs, eventually concrete slab tracks were selected as an alternative. However, owing to the hydration heat reactions and temperature-affected shrinkage of the concrete, a variety of studies to solve maintenance problems related to concrete slab tracks are underway. This study analyzed characteristics of TQI values evaluating track irregularity, investigated the relationship between crack progress and TQI, and then evaluated the correlation between the two values. Through our analysis, we found that there is a need to supplement the problems of the current method and develop a track evaluation index which takes cracking into account. We also concluded that TQI is the main decision-making tool in track maintenance.

Keyword : Concrete slab track, Track irregularity, Crack, TQI values, Correlation, Decision making in track maintenance