Turnout is an important part of railway track structure. Turnouts are highly versatile, and turnouts are also typical products in the railway industry. A switch is a circuit branch into or through another circuit and a branch of a crossover device. The development of railway industry and mining is closely related to turnouts, so there are many classifications of turnouts in these two aspects.
There are some complex situations in railway turnouts that do not exist in ordinary turnouts. For example, the influence of the fixed rut on the sharp angle of the rail, the protective effect on the rail and the rail is much greater than that of the airfoil curved rail, and the longitudinal and lateral stiffness of the rail in the turnout yard is much higher than that of the ordinary rail. The ratio of switch fittings and switch lines varies greatly with the size and density of the railway. China is one of the countries with the highest railway traffic volume and density in the world. When the locomotive and the vehicle pass through the turnout, the force between the wheel and the rail is far greater than the normal line. Therefore, the maintenance workload of the turnout part is larger than that of the ordinary track of the same length, and the service life of the main components of the turnout is shorter than that of the ordinary track. It can be seen that the turnout plays an important role in the operation of the railway.
