Resumen
Purpose. The work provides a theoretical research about the possibility of using methods that determine the lifetime of a railway track not only in terms of total stresses, and accounting its structure and dynamic characteristics. The aim of these studies is creation the model of deformations accumulation for assessment of service life of a railway track taking into account these features. Methodology. To simulate a gradual change state during the operation (accumulation of deformations) the railway track is presented as a system that consists of many particles of different materials collected in a coherent design. It is appropriate to speak not about the appearance of deformations of a certain size in a certain section of the track, and the probability of such event on the site. If to operate the probability of occurrence of deviations, comfortable state of the system is characterized by the number of breaks of the conditional internal connections. The same state of the system may correspond to different combinations of breaks. The more breaks, the more the number of options changes in the structure of the system appropriate to its current state. Such a process can be represented as a gradual transition from an ordered state to a chaotic one. To describe the characteristics of the system used the numerical value of the entropy. Findings. Its entropy is constantly increasing at system aging. The growth of entropy is expressed by changes in the internal energy of the system, which can be determined using mechanical work forces, which leads to deformation. This gives the opportunity to show quantitative indication of breaking the bonds in the system as a consequence of performing mechanical work. According to the results of theoretical research methods for estimation of the timing of life cycles of railway operation considering such factors as the structure of the flow of trains, construction of the permanent way, the movement of trains at high speeds was developed. Originality. For the first time to simulate the accumulation of deformations of railway tracks this figure as the entropy of the system was used. Practical value. Analytic dependences have been brought to practical techniques that make it possible to analyze the track sections with different designs or with different operating conditions in terms of deformation accumulation.