This study aims to investigate the rail resistance characteristics of Shinkansen slab tracks and the failure behavior of track components when subjected to large lateral forces caused by vehicles during earthquakes. To this end, a lateral loading test was carried out on a full-scale Shinkansen slab track. Using the test results, a mechanical model of rail support springs was developed for use in seismic vehicle behavior simulations, and the effect of this model on the results of vehicle behavior simulations was confirmed. In the lateral loading test, it was found that rail tilting is dominant in rail deformation. Therefore, this study proposes a rail support spring model which combines a rotational spring to represent rail tilting and a lateral spring to represent baseplate sliding. A seismic vehicle behavior analysis was carried out using both the proposed model and the conventional model with only a horizontal spring. The results showed that the effect of modeling the rail support springs was small under the conditions of this study.
Goto et al. (Wed,) studied this question.