Computer-Aided Design of Railroad Horizontal Arc Areas in Adapting to Satellite Measurements

Abstract

This paper presents a method of designing railway sections located in horizontal arcs. The adopted procedure is universal, i.e., it creates the possibility of varying both the type and the length of the assumed transition curves. This means that the applied analytical formulas apply to the boundary conditions of the transition curves and all of the simplifications widely existing in common algorithms have been eliminated. The presented approach is especially useful in the case of analyzing data obtained from continuous satellite measurements. To create the horizontal arc, a calculation algorithm has been implemented in an original computer program that is under the authors’ development. The main features and the results obtained by the use of the program have been described in the paper on the basis of the existing geometrical layout. The authors show the process of designing a particular arc as a sequence of characteristic steps that highlight the problem of assessment. It is shown that the proposed design method allows the generation of the following alternative variants instantaneously, without any restrictions. The program also includes quality indicators to help assess the practical suitability of particular geometrical layouts.