New durable, high-performance ballast for sustainable railway infrastructure

NEOBALLAST: THE INNOVATIVE AND SUSTAINABLE SOLUTION FOR RAILWAY BALLAST

Composed of conventional ballast aggregates coated with an advanced binder and rubber dust from vehicle tires at the end of their useful life, this new material has technical, environmental and economic advantages.

Other benefits include less degradation, better energy dissipation and load distribution, better performance in terms of noise and vibrations, less need to extract aggregates from quarries, and the recycling of vehicle tires at the end. of its useful life and a lower need for maintenance, which leads to an overall reduction in life cycle costs.

Neoballast is an ideal solution for railway tunnels with limited clearance, urban areas with noise and vibration problems, areas of high track rigidity or transition areas, as well as geographical areas with a shortage of high-quality ballast, among other applications.

Bet on the railway

The ballast track is the most used superstructure worldwide. However, the degradation of ballast aggregates represents a problem that has yet to be resolved. The large cyclic load produced by the trains as they pass, the aggressiveness of the environment and the periodic tamping activities, result in a progressive deterioration of the aggregates in the ballast layer, which translates into a reduction in the geometric quality of the track.

In this context, Neoballast is presented as an innovative and sustainable solution to improve the economic and environmental performance of European railways. Neoballast increases not only the service life of the ballast layer, but also the overall service life of the track by using a recycled rubber lining from end-of-life tyres (ELTs).