The Importance of Elastic Rail Clips Quality and its Application

The Importance of Elastic Rail Clips Quality

Railway rails are the components that support locomotives, and the rails are fixed to the sleepers of the track bed by elastic fasteners. The crimping parts of elastic fasteners are mainly elastic rail clips. It acts on the track through the bending and twisting deformation of the elastic rail clips, ensures the reliable connection between the rails for a long time, maintains the integrity of the track as much as possible, prevents the longitudinal and lateral movement of the rail relative to the sleeper, and ensures the normal gauge, thereby ensuring the safety of rail vehicles. In addition, because the contact between the train wheel and the rail is rigid, it is inevitable to cause vibration, and the special elastic structure of the elastic rail clips also has the effect of absorbing the impact energy generated by the vehicle when driving by to achieve shock absorption.

The elastic rail clip works under repeated alternating stress, it bears a variety of effects such as bending, torsion, fatigue, and corrosion, and when the vehicle passes, it also bears a high instantaneous shock load, so the performance requirements for the elastic rail clips are very strict.

With the increase of axle load of railway transport vehicles and the improvement of train running speed, as well as the development of urban rail transit and subway, elastic rail clip as a key link of track structure is also constantly developing, and its importance is also more and more concerned by all countries.

Elastic Rail Clips Application

The railway sleepers can be affixed to the rails by using appropriate fastenings. These fastenings get exposed to primarily dynamic vibrations and lateral, vertical, and longitudinal stresses, and thus the conventionally used rigid fastenings do not prove to be convenient to sustain these forces. So comes the elastic fastenings to the rescue and thus elastic rail clips are used to keep the rail in position.

Being used as a fastener, elastic rail clip is regarded as one of the major components in the rail construction sector. These are manufactured using forged spring steel and have numerous usages in the railroad. In the context of fastening, the sole responsibility of elastic rail clip is to secure steel rail and railway sleeper conjointly. It is eyed as one of the finest ways to ensure that steel rails don’t shift, crook, or warp.

These elastic rail clips can be used with other parts of the fastening system to achieve strength and toughness while laying the rail tracks.

Rail Spike

Elastic rail clips are known to be used with railroad spikes in the railway fastening system. A railroad spike or simply rail spike is a sizeable large nail that is used to lock the base plates and rails to tie in the railway track. When used with an elastic rail clip, it proves to be an excellent combination to maintain a gauge between the running rails.

Rail Pads

Rail pads are elastic polyurethane sheets used to protect the sleeper from wearing. They are inserted between sleepers and rails, and affixed with elastic rail clips. The elastic rail clip and rail pad together provide a great amount of stiffness to the track structure.

Rail Plastic Dowel

One way to provide good understructure and support to the rail tracks is by using elastic rail clips along with rail plastic dowels. A rail plastic dowel can be regarded as a fastening foundation in the rail fastening system as it needs to be embedded into the concrete sleeper prior to a congregation of other parts of the system.

China is a country with a vast expanse and great differences in climate, transportation conditions, and regions, and it needs a variety of elastic rail clips with different performance requirements to meet the requirements of different tracks and different track types. AGICO offers a variety of models of elastic rail clips, if you are interested please contact us.