ABSTRACT
Lateral resistance of sleepers play an important role in keeping railway ballasted tracks horizontally stable. Lateral resistance is usually evaluated by tests in which single or multiple sleepers are pulled out horizontally, either in-situ or in the laboratory. Although it is ideal to conduct the tests in full-scale, laboratory tests are often conducted with scaled sleepers and ballasts. However, the relation between the test results using scaled models and those using full scale models, are not experimentally investigated. Therefore, the objective of this research was to examine the effect of model scales on lateral resistance of sleepers. Single sleeper pullout tests were conducted in several scales, to compare the results with those of previous studies and of the calculated estimation from a similitude law. Also, friction between sleepers and base ballasts were investigated to evaluate the effect of model scales on a friction coefficient, which affects the result of lateral resistance.
