The ballasted ladder track, which features high rigidity and remarkable stability against track buckling, is expected to enable to utilize continuous welded rails (CWR) on sharp curves, which has been restricted to apply in on cross-tie track. On this study, in order to clarify the buckling safety of CWR on the ballasted ladder track, an advanced buckling analysis program using three-dimensional finite element method has developed to model the structure of arbitrary tracks and to evaluate the nonlinear behavior of tracks and tack buckling due to thermal and vehicle loads. In addition, the authors carried out a parametric analysis using this program and clarified the high resistance of track buckling on the ballasted ladder track.

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