Natural tests of the brushed working body with combined type of blades

The main direction of improving repair processes and current track maintenance, reducing time and labor costs is the maximum mechanization of all track work. A large fleet of track machines and mechanisms is used on domestic highways. However, existing machines do not yet provide for the complete mechanization of all track work. A significant place among such works is the cleaning of railway tracks from weeds (the level of mechanization is 60-65%) and the removal of excess ballast from the middle of the track. The working body of the machines for carrying out these works is a brush pick-up with flexible blades, which ensures that weeds and ballast are cleaned below the level of the rail head without damaging the structural elements of the railway track and turnouts. Due to the sufficient elasticity of the blades, the brush pick-ups do not capture foreign objects in the working area, which protects the transporting elements of the machines from destruction. As a rule, on domestic machines, flexible blades are segments of a steel rope with a diameter of 16-21 mm. The main disadvantage of brush pick-ups is their low efficiency due to the fatigue breaking out of the flexible blades at the exit point. Well-known foreign companies for the manufacture of flexible blades use synthetic materials with internal or external reinforcement. The domestic industry produces a significant range of synthetic materials and products based on them, which makes it promising to increase the efficiency of brush working bodies by manufacturing flexible elements from synthetic materials and optimizing pick-up parameters. This article discusses the results of field tests of the brush pick-up of the KPU-1 machine.