Numerical Analysis of Railway Formation with Geogrid-Reinforced Ballast and Blanket Layer

The Vande Bharat Express, which travels at a speed of 180 km/h, is the high-speed train currently in operation in India. India intends to start using its first bullet train by 2026. Given that railway travel will become much faster in the coming years. The strains on India’s railway subgrade component would significantly rise with the addition of high-speed railways and bullet trains. The strains may cause failure in soil that is more brittle. Utilizing geosynthetics in the lengths of currently weak formations is an alternate strategy to reduce the number of stress. The paper investigates the importance of using geosynthetics (geogrids) for existing layers of ballast and blanket. Using the finite element software PLAXIS 3D, the vertical deformations and stresses of a railway embankment (with and without geogrid) are calculated under a moving train load of 90 kN. The speed of the moving train is taken as 180 km/h. Dynamic analysis was used to simulate the real-time movement of the train. It also investigated the different stresses and shear wave velocities of moving trains at various sections. The results showed that including additional numbers of geosynthetics helped in reducing deformations and stresses further to a certain level (up to 40%).