Modelling Ballast Scour in Rail Tracks due to Flood Water

Abstract

Under the action of floodwaters, rail ballast can be damaged and even wash away completely. We discuss here a modelling paradigm for this process, especially the solution of the freeboundary problem. Two methods of solution are presented, the first based on the boundary element method and the second based on conformal mappings. We show that for the conformal map, we can derive an explicit solution which involves only matrix multiplication by rewriting the systems of equations as an integral equation. Brief preliminary results are presented.