Development and Calibration of a Crossing Panel Model - Comparison of Beam and 3D Representations of the Crossing Rail

Paper in proceeding, 2025

This paper presents a finite element model of a railway crossing panel for use in multibody simulations (MBS). It is a two-layer track model with rails and sleepers represented by beam elements, and a crossing rail represented by three-dimensional (3D) solid elements. The track model uses linear bushings for rail fastenings and bi–linear bushings for ballast to allow for potential voids between sleepers and ballast. The model is calibrated and validated to measurement data from a comprehensively instrumented switch & crossing (S&C) demonstrator installed in the Austrian railway network as a part of the European research programme Shift2Rail. A parameterisation with eight parameters relating to track stiffness and ballast voids is introduced to enable the calibration. In a comparison it is shown that the 3D model and a more conventional beam model of the crossing show similar levels of agreement against the measurement data. The 3D model has an increased computational time of about 25% compared to the beam model.