Abstract

In the Canadian context, it is common that railway tracks transverse a mountainous area prone to natural disaster like mudflows. In the geographical areas where Champlain clays of the Ottawa Valley and St. Lawrence Lowlands in Canada are prone to mudflows, which results in further safety implications when a freight train is passing through this area, further threatening human lives in addition to public properties. Therefore, the investigation of the interaction of flow with trains, the parameters affecting mudflows’ destructive force and the train derailment potential is important to determine the amount of potential damage.
The aim of this research was to study the feasibility of modeling mudflows utilizing the smoothed particle hydrodynamics method based on the available data in the literature and model the scenario of mudflows impacting railway cars on top of a railway embankment and quantitatively investigate the interaction of mudflow with trains. The parametric studies were performed including the identification of key factors, such as geometric characteristics of the natural hillslope and the railway embankment, mudflows’ properties and freight train loading. To calibrate the simulation tool for reproducing the mudflow flowing on hillslope as in the real-world, a series of flume tests were modeled based on the physical large-scale experiment carried out by Bugnion et al. (2010), paved the way for implementation of the case studies' environment and properties of mudflow in the simulation tool in order to be modeled. The control variable method was introduced in numerical model studies to individually study each parameter and its effect on the impact force exerted by mudflows on railway cars. As a contribution, this study provides the information of critical case resulting train derailment with geometric terrain parameters and mudflows' quantities, which could be used as a reference for guidelines used in railway industry.