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Ballast Mats - A Literature Review and Influencing Factor to Laboratory Testing (Room Sagamore 1)

A primary goal of the rail industry is to reduce the level of maintenance required to operate a safe and efficient railroad. Railroads can achieve this through increasing the strength of their infrastructure components, reducing the in-track stresses, or a combination of the two. In an effort to reduce the stresses in the track structure, many freight and passenger railroads have begun to engineer their track substructure with under ballast mats (UBM), an elastic layer located below the ballast or concrete slab. However, though the use of UBMs has consistently increased, there are currently no North American standards, and most technical content has been developed in Europe and Japan. Therefore, this paper presents a thorough literature review of UBMs which covers research and standard testing practices. Further, this paper will present findings from basic laboratory experimentation performed at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). These findings quantify how changing testing practices to reflect the North American loading environment affect the component property results. Ultimately, this work aims to provide guidance to the future development of AREMA recommended practices for the use and testing of UBMs.