Railway Loading Support

Dead load of rails is not calculated/included.

User can enter number of fatigue cycles for railway or roadway traffic. This is used to calculate an alpha factor, which multiplies with the allowable reinforcing fatigue range, and is limited between the values of 0.74 and 1.0.

Fatigue for railway loads uses half of the input maximum DLA for both specifications.

Maximum DLA when calculated by specification is 1.0 for both specifications. It starts at 1.0 at bottom of ballast/top of fill and reduces linearly down to 0.0 at 2m fill depth.

Track self weight is input as a representative uniform surcharge, and is included in load combinations in the BV (vertical ballast) and BH (horizontal ballast) cases.

For AS1597, default ballast load factors are assumed to be those of AS 5100 (1.7max, 0.7min).

Horizontal railway live load values in cases where there is less than 0.3m of fill is applied using a pressure that is linearly interpolated values between the pressure at 0m depth and 0.3m depth for both AS 5100 and AS 1597. See AS 1597 3.3.6.3.