Abstract:Abstract:Research purposes: The lateral resistance of the sleeper is an important parameter to the geometric stability of the track and the transverse stability of the CWR. With the development of ballasted track operation conditions becoming more complex, more challenges are posed to the design and selection of the sleeper and developing RAMS oriented sleepers has been a hot research point. There are few researches on the bi- block sleeper on the ballasted track bed and its lateral resistance in China. In this paper, a series of lateral resistance tests for the bi-block sleeper and the Ⅲc mono sleeper were carried out to investigate the basic characteristics and influence of the lateral resistance for the bi-block sleeper. Research conclusions: (1) Under the same ballast bed dimension, the bi- block sleeper produces more lateral resistance than the Ⅲc mono sleeper, with the variation of 13.6%~25.5%. (2) Raising the shoulder width can increase the lateral resistance of both the bi- block and Ⅲc mono sleeper with little difference. (3) Raising the shoulder height, which can significantly increase the lateral resistance, is more effective for the bi-block sleeper. For example, when the shoulder height increases from 0 mm to 150 mm, the lateral resistance increases by 4.2 kN ( 51.9%) for the bi-block sleeper, while 2.7 kN (38.0%) for the Ⅲc mono sleeper. (4) The conclusions of this paper lay the theoretical and experimental foundation for the application of the bi-block sleeper in the track engineering in China.