The influence of different train speeds on the force interaction of rolling stock and railway track under high freight intensity

Abstract

In the context of the widespread development of Russian-Chinese trade and economic relations and the orientation of our country's transportation process to the east, new challenges are faced by the railway infrastructure associated with an increase in freight traffic through the Eastern polygon. The freight capacity on the polygon’s railways is expected to increase to 180 million tons per year by 2024, the transit container traffic almost four times, and by 2030 it is planned to increase to 255 million tons. Therefore, the polygon is becoming one of the key Russian transport corridors. Under such operating conditions, the infrastructure complex experiences an enormous strain. Planning and organization of the current maintenance of the railway track and repair work are becoming a difficult task for the structural divisions of the track management: on the one hand, ensuring the quality operation of the track, and on the other, maintaining the passage of train traffic taking into account the established speeds and ensuring the safety of rolling stock. The analysis of incidents recorded in the unified corporate automated infrastructure management system in recent years by the East Siberian Directorate of Infrastructure showed that the planning and organization of the current maintenance of the track and the capacity of the East Siberian Railway are negatively affected by failures of technical means, insufficient reliability of the element design of the upper structure of the track, as well as the security measures  in the form of a speed limit. To solve the problems, it is necessary to find new approaches to planning, organizing and performing work to maintain the technical level of track infrastructure facilities under high load conditions, ensuring safe movement of trains with established speeds, but also to consider methods for extending the service life of a railway track and revising the speed management system, which  not only have to increase the safety of the transportation process, but also to have a positive effect on the throughput capacity of the transportation process while extending the service life of the track infrastructure.