Windblown Sand Mitigation Along Railway Megaprojects: A Comparative Study

In recent years, emerging States have been pushing the planning and design of railway megaprojects across arid and desert regions. Such railway projects are now experiencing windblown sand, an unfamiliar problem to many civil and structural engineers. The sand transported by the wind accumulates around any kind of built obstacle. Windblown sand affects infrastructure construction and serviceability, and undermines users’ safety. To counter its effects, a number of sand mitigation measures have been proposed, mainly through a trial-and-error empirical approach. A rational approach to design, analysis and performance assessment of sand mitigation measures is still taken in the scientific literature, design guidelines and standards. In the present paper, readers are first familiarized with windblown sand-induced effects on railways and sand mitigation measures. Then, the study proposes a probabilistic approach to assess the action of windblown sand and plan sand removal maintenance operations on railway infrastructure, and puts this into practice. Three different sand mitigation measures are tested and their performances are comparatively discussed.