NL1028795C2 - Railway construction for e.g. train, street car, subway, has embedment agent that is provided between rail and tray structure which is provided between road surface material and rail - Google Patents

Abstract

Two parallel rails (2) are each provided in a trench (3) on the surface of a car road (1). Each rail is part of a prefabricated assembly that also includes an embedment agent. A tray structure is provided between the road surface material and the rail. The embedment agent is provided between the tray structure and rail. An independent claim is also included for a prefabricated assembly.

Description

Title: Railway construction

This invention relates to a railway construction for train, tram, metro od., I.h.b. in a car-5 road, wherein the rails are recessed in the driving surface. It should be understood that "motorway" means any road suitable for road traffic, including pedestrians, cyclists, passenger cars, trucks and motorcycles.

10 Such infrastructure systems in which rail and road are combined find their application mainly in urban areas due to the lack of space there. The combination of transport systems is then obvious, inter alia in connection with efficiency but also with the economy. However, the invention is also suitable for other locations, such as industrial sites, tunnels or non-urban areas.

NL-A-1007815 discloses a rail construction sunk in a motorway where the two parallel rails are each placed in a separate slot in a fastening layer of a porous starting material with a relatively large percentage of cavities, such as ZOAB (Very Open Asphalt Concrete), wherein cavities are filled at a later time with a hardening stiffening agent, e.g. based on cement. The rails are fixed in the slots 25 by means of a plastic casting compound. Therefore, it is not necessary for the rail fixation to link the rails to one another with sleepers, connecting bars or other fixing elements, or to use a concrete foundation to which the rails are fixed. The fixing layer can be applied relatively quickly and easily with the aid of, for example, known asphalt spreading techniques, so that the driving surface is quickly available for car traffic. Because the pavement forms the rail foundation, a cost saving is realized.

In the system known from NL-A-1007815, the rails must be arranged in the work, adjusted and fixed, which is difficult and inaccurate. Furthermore, a special cover construction is required to stabilize the slots for the rails. This cover construction cannot provide a noise reduction 1028795 2.

DE-U-296 11 725 discloses a rail structure of mutually coupled rails sunk into a motorway, wherein a row is arranged on the side of the rail of concrete edge elements extending over the entire height of the rail. Each edge element is glued to the concrete substructure with special mortar. The aim of this prefabricated peripheral element is to prevent the road surface from collapsing immediately adjacent to the rail and the resulting instabilities.

EP-A-0 737 778 discloses a sound-damping track construction wherein the two rails are each placed in a separate slot in a concrete or steel foundation. A layer of sound-absorbing material is provided between and next to the rails, such as ZOAB. This track construction is not located on a motorway. Data on the fixation of the rails are missing.

US-A-5513797 discloses the use of specially designed rails for combined infrastructure systems with a cement-concrete road construction in which the slot for the rail is subsequently milled. The rail has on both sides protruding flanges on the top that come to rest on the road construction and on which the rail placed in a trench in the road surface will hang. These flanges provide a relatively large contact surface with the road construction for a good load distribution. FIG. 4 of this US discloses an embodiment for a relatively weak road construction, for which purpose first a prefabricated slotted cement concrete beam of approximately 5 m long is placed in the cement concrete road construction. The rail is then placed in the slotted beam. Because the beam and the rail are installed separately one after the other, extensive adjustment work is required in the work. The insights of this known infrastructure system are useless for road constructions made of considerably weaker materials than cement concrete, such as sound-reducing (asphalt concrete) mixtures such as ZOAB, among other things due to the high loads, flowing away from the poured mortar in the road construction 1028795 3 the rail is embedded, unfavorable expansion coefficients.

In Germany a system was developed in the 1950s consisting of short prefab cement concrete slabs that were factory-equipped with both rails. This system turned out to be unstable.

The state of the art implies that for a combined infrastructure system the road construction must be made of cement concrete or an asphalt concrete treated with curing reinforcing agent. However, for a combined infrastructure system, cement concrete has a number of important disadvantages, such as a relatively long curing time, the need for expansion joints, and the difficult accessibility to the infrastructure below. As a result, the use of cement concrete leads, inter alia, to long-term blocks, instabilities and poor maintainability of the infrastructure.

A special problem is that the combined infrastructure system often has to be fitted in an already existing route that may be curdled as shortly as possible when converting.

For a successful application of such a combined infrastructure system, one or more of the following aspects may be important: - the construction must be durable; the trench in the road surface, in which the rail is included, must be able to withstand the loads due to passing traffic; the forces exerted on the rail must be appropriately diverted to the ground; - the construction must be such that the passing traffic causes a minimum noise or vibration load for the environment. This can be achieved, for example, with noise-reducing coatings for the road surface 35 (e.g. ZOAB) and / or embedding the rail with adapted mortar and damping material, but also by reducing the sensitivity to inaccuracies or working with prefabricated elements; 1028795 4 the construction must be able to proceed quickly and / or in phases with minimal traffic nuisance, which can for instance be met by applying prefabricated elements and / or not having to use sleepers, connecting rods or other elements fixing the rails mutually; maintenance to the construction must be possible, whereby the subsurface or underlying infrastructure must also be accessible without it being necessary to completely dismantle and rebuild the construction.

Starting from the foregoing, an improved railway construction is contemplated with this invention, i.h.b. for use in a motorway. In particular, the present invention contemplates a railway construction in which the rails are located, preferably fixed, in their own trench in a road pavement, wherein said road pavement preferably forms the rail foundation at least partially. In particular, the road paving and / or the substructure therefor is preferably not made of (reinforced) cement concrete or other rigid material (whether or not poured into the work or built up from prefabricated elements). It is most preferred that the road pavement and / or the substructure therefor, or at least a (substantial) part thereof, be made in non-rigid material, eg asphalt concrete or in a material with processing properties (such as speed of application, curing time until driveability by cars) comparable to that of asphalt concrete.

According to the present invention, it is proposed that a railway sunken in a motorway where the two parallel rails are each arranged in a slot in the road surface, the rail being embedded in embedding material and wherein the rail forms part of a prefabricated unit comprising at least the prefabricated unit. rail and the embedding material; and / or a wall element is located between the road surface material and the rail, embedding material preferably being located between said wall element and the rail.

Most preferred is the embodiment in which the prefabricated unit includes the rail, the embedding material and the wall element.

The wall element is preferably part of a construction which surrounds the rail on at least two of one of the longitudinal sides and the underside. The rail can thus be accommodated in a container construction open at the top.

Experiments have shown to surprise that prefabrication offers important advantages for the construction in curves. In curves, adjusting also involves accurately tilting the rails and aligning both rails to each other in the vertical sense. These operations are more manageable in the factory.

The wall or tray construction is preferably divided in lengthwise direction into (tray-shaped) elements. The groove present between these elements is preferably filled with a preferably flexible filling material, such as a mortar, with which any remaining expansions can be absorbed. In order to reinforce the edge of the trench in the road surface and to avoid damaging it, the upper edge of the wall or container construction is preferably at the same level as the road surface.

Where reference is made here to asphalt concrete, other hardening materials such as gravel or stony grains are also bound with bituminous (like) or thermoplastic binders.

It is thus possible with the invention to install the rails quickly and efficiently, whereby a desired positioning accuracy as well as a high durability and low maintenance sensitivity can be achieved in a reliable manner. The wall element in particular offers a good force transfer between the rail and the motorway due to its large contact surface. The angles of the bucket profile can be adjusted / optimized for greater stability and / or better load transfer.

The invention also relates to the prefabricated unit as such, which is suitable, for example, for use in the railway construction according to the present invention.

Further objects, advantages, measures, embodiments, etc. of the invention will be apparent from the following description of a presently advantageous embodiment with reference to the accompanying drawing.

FIG. 1 shows the profile of a partially shown roadway with sunken railway; and FIG. 2 shows in cross-section the prefabricated unit according to the present invention.

The motorway 1 has a structure as known from NL-A-1007815 (incorporated herein by reference), and corresponding reference numerals are used to indicate corresponding parts, while also referring to the part of NL-A-1007815, from page 3, r. 18 to the end for a discussion of those parts. It must be clear that a layer of cement-concrete is missing in the superstructure.

The prefabricated unit 10 of Fig. 2 consists of the rail 2, the embedding means 6 and the box construction 11. The embedding means 6 can be a plastic molding compound, which may contain vibration-damping fillers. The tray 11 is made of (reinforced) cement concrete, is relatively thick-walled and forms two side wall and a bottom element. However, it could also be made from other materials such as sheet steel, polymer concrete, plastic. A different design of the container 11 is also conceivable. In addition, the container can be made thin-walled. One of the purposes of the tray 11 is to sufficiently protect the relatively soft material of the edges of the slot 3 against damage. To that end, the upper edge of the trough 11 is preferably at substantially the same level as the running surface 5.

This unit 10 can be placed in its entirety in a slot 3 made in an existing motorway. When a new motorway is installed, it is possible to first position the unit 10 on, for example, the foundation layer 8 and then build up the road surface 5. so that the unit 10 is automatically 1028795 7 embedded in the road material, such as the fixing layer 4 and / or the paving layer 7.

Another example is the situation where first the foundation of the road is applied, including, if necessary, the first underlayers of the pavement from, for example, asphalt concrete. The units 10 are then placed on top and glued, possibly in a shallow slot. The remainder of the paving is then applied over the height of the portion of the unit 10 projecting above the slot.

The unit 10 is fixed in the slot 3 with an adhesive that fills the gap between the tray 11 and the slot 3.

It is conceivable that the rail 2 and the tray 11 are substantially continuous within the unit 10. However, it is preferable, inter alia from the viewpoint of thermal expansion behavior, to divide the tray 11 in the longitudinal direction into a large number of individual elements along the length of the rail 2, while the rail 2 preferably has a section length. For example, the rail 2 has a length in the order of magnitude of 15 m, while the elements of the tray 11 have a length not larger than 2 m, preferably smaller than 1 m, such as approximately 10-20 cm.

It should be clear that variants also belong to the invention, for instance based on one or more separate aspects of an embodiment disclosed here, optionally in combination with one or more separate aspects of one or more other embodiments disclosed here.

For example, it is conceivable to use the unit 10 in a motorway in which one or more cement concrete layers are indeed present. The combination of ZOAB or other porous, preferably bituminous starting material with a relatively large percentage of (open) cavities and curing stiffening agent for the fixing layer 4 can be replaced, for example, by a layer of carbon binder. The curing stiffening agent could be omitted from the layer 4 or replaced with a non-cement-curing stiffening agent. The ZOAB in the layer 1028795 8 could be replaced by another asphalt material or a material with equivalent processability, for example without or with only a relatively small percentage of cavities. The paving layer 7 and / or foundation layer 8 may be missing or may consist of other material. For example, the rail 2 can be supplied via a damping mat od. support damping means on the bottom of the bin 11. The tray 11 could be bottomless, so that the bottom of the prefabricated unit is formed by the embedding means 6.

It must be clear that the embedding material 6 connects tightly to the rail 2 and / or the tray 11.

1028795

Claims (5)

A railroad submerged in a motorway or carriageway wherein the two parallel rails (2) are each arranged in a slot 5 (3) in the road surface, the rail being embedded in embedding material (6) and wherein the rail forms part of a prefabricated unit (10) containing at least the rail and the embedding material and a wall element, said wall element forming part of a construction that surrounds the rail on at least two of one of the longitudinal sides and the underside, so that the rail and the embedding material are accommodated in a container construction (11) open at the top, and wherein the container construction is divided lengthwise into container-shaped elements. 2. Construction as claimed in claim 1, wherein the groove present between the box-shaped elements is filled with a preferably flexible filling material, such as a mortar, with which any remaining expansions can be absorbed. A construction as claimed in any one of claims 1 or 2, wherein the upper edge of the wall or container structure is at the same level as the road surface (5). 25 4. Construction as claimed in any of the foregoing claims, wherein the roadway contains hardening material bonded with bituminous (like) or thermoplastic binders. A prefabricated unit for use in the construction as claimed in any one of claims 1 to 5. 1 02 8795