Novel performance-based technique for predicting maintenance strategy of bitumen stabilised ballast

Despite being the most used worldwide, railway ballasted tracks presents high maintenance cost relatedto ballast settlement and particle degradation. With the aim of reducing life cycle costs, bitumen stabilisedballast (BSB) has been recently proposed as a relatively cheap alternative maintenance solutionto be applied to existing tracks. This study aims at assessing the potential advantages of this technology,defining a novel maintenance strategy of traditional ballasted track-beds. A protocol for the application ofthe BSB technology and its associated maintenance strategy is defined. To estimate minor and majormaintenance operations of BSB scenario in comparison to traditional ballasted track-bed, an integratedmodel, based on laboratory tests, combining the evolution of track irregularities and ballast contaminationwith traffic, was used. Results together with a sensitivity analysis related to main parametersadopted revealed that the application of BSB is expected to provide a significant increase of intervalsbetween both minor and major maintenance activities.