Rail break and track buckling risk assessment after derailment reconstruction

Paper in proceeding, 2025

The current study investigates risks of resuming traffic after track restoration initiated by a derailment. As motivated in the following, the focus is on track buckling and fracture from rail foot cracks. Regarding track buckling, a recently developed predictive model is complemented by an estimation of critical temperatures from evaluation of operational track buckling reports. For rail breaks, fracture mechanics analyses of fatigue crack growth and failure are carried out. Among the results, the study estimates track buckling to be an issue for temperatures above some -5 °C. Further, it demonstrates the difficulty in provoking premature fracture by overloading and estimates existing rail foot cracks to be an issue at least over the next winter.