Keywords: stone ballast, rubber particle, rubber coating, ballast life, abrasion, breakage, settlement.

So far, many studies have been conducted to improve the degradation behavior of ballasted tracks by using waste tires mixed with ballast. However, coating stone ballast materials with rubber particles, which has been proposed in recent years, has received less attention in the literature. In this paper, a laboratory investigation on the effect of rubber coating on ballast life was carried out. For this purpose, the optimal coating method with a focus on selecting the appropriate percentage of rubber particles mixed with adhesive was presented in the first stage. Then, by applying the selected coating, its effect on the abrasive behavior of ballast taken from a quarry in Tehran city was investigated through Los Angeles and Micro-Deval tests. In the next step, breakage and settlement of the ballast with and without rubber coating were evaluated by performing ballast box test by applying 100,000 loading cycles with an amplitude of 15 kN and frequency of 3 Hz. The results confirm that the application of rubber coating has led to a reduction in the Los Angeles and Micro-Deval coefficients by 66.15% and 93.18%, respectively, and increasing settlement and decreasing breakage under cyclic loading by 24.17% and 88.32%, respectively. In general, according to the Canadian Pacific Rail Code, the use of this technology can enhance the average ballast life by almost 91%.

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