Experimental Research on Sand Sediment Protection on Railway Tracks

The wind-blown sand disaster on the railway has a very important negative influence on the economic development of traffic networks in desert areas. While there are some engineering protection measures for railway sand deposition, they are far from satisfactory in terms of economic efficiency and protection performance. Therefore, it is still of great practical significance to explore novel measures for actively preventing sand deposition on railway tracks in desert areas. In this article, the laws of sand deposition on single and dual tracks were studied with the help of field experiments. On this basis, it can be seen that the deposition of sand on the rear track can be effectively reduced by placing various types of baffles on the track. Field experiments were designed to study the change law of sand deposition ratio in front of the tracks caused by placing baffles of different cross sections. The results show that placing a 45° inclined baffle on the track can reduce the volume of sand deposition by up to 42%. The findings in this paper can provide scientific guidance for the design of new desert railways or novel protective measures for railway sand deposition.