Reviews of the Printed Works of Engineer F. K. Yasevich

1. Review by Prof. S. Koreysha and I. Stetsevich

Engineer F. K. Yasevich has published: “A Manual for Conducting Experiments in the Testing of Building Materials,” “Calculations of Bridge Supports,” placed in the Journal of the Ministry of Ways of Communication for 1901, and “An Approximate Estimate of the Cost of Works in the Construction of Bridges,” placed in the Proceedings of the Assembly of Engineers of Ways of Communication for 1903. All these works were given an appraisal by professors of the Institute of Engineers of Ways of Communication: N. A. Belelyubsky and S. K. Kunitsky, and by the late Professor V. Kurdyumov, characterizing these works as very interesting and useful; one cannot but agree with such an assessment.

Subsequently, in the Proceedings of the Assembly of Engineers of Ways of Communication for 1901 and in the Polish journal Przegląd Techniczny for 1902, there appeared an article by Engineer Yasevich concerning the use of galvanized pipes under railway embankments, in which theoretical considerations were presented, as well as practical data on the use of these pipes, with references to materials from Russian and foreign literature. This article, although in certain instances—namely with respect to the limits of applicability of galvanized pipes—it suffers from editorial ambiguities, appears to be a thorough and interesting work contributing to the clarification of a very important economic question: the dissemination of a cheaper and more reliable method of draining water from beneath the trackbed of railways. This question becomes all the more acute the more the country’s cultivation increases, and with it the requirement, when laying the railway trackbed, to leave as far as possible undisturbed the natural distribution of waters. Such a requirement entails an increase in the number of artificial structures and, consequently, the search for means for a cheap and successful solution of this question; therefore the article by Engineer Yasevich must be regarded as a useful contribution to the technical literature.

Turning next to the article published in the current year, “Investigation of Ballasts,” it is necessary to dwell upon it in greater detail, both because of the importance of the subject itself and the seriousness of the work, and because of the necessity of a critical attitude toward it.

First of all, it must be said that in the technical literature there are almost no works devoted specifically to the study of ballasts. In a few separate articles, and in most cases incidentally in the exposition of the theories of the permanent way of railway track, some material on this question is encountered in the literature.

In view of this, and also of the poverty of the subject itself in terms of experimental data, the author’s task was very difficult.

If, on the one hand, separating the question of the work of ballast from the work of rails, sleepers, and the track bed does not appear possible, then, on the other hand, combining into a single whole investigations of ballasts with the theory of the permanent way, i.e. with calculations of stresses in rails, etc., is incorrect—it is necessary to reckon with the final results and to assign to each factor influencing the ballast its proper place. In this respect the author has not maintained the guiding idea and systematic character of the exposition: the author dwells too much on formulas for stresses in rails, and, with regard to the length of sleepers, which so strongly affects the stability of the track, in his considerations gives the length as 2.75 meters, i.e. a length adopted on foreign railways and, unfortunately, nowhere applicable on the Russian standard gauge; meanwhile the length of the sleeper contributes to a more or less proper distribution of pressure on the ballast and influences the coefficient of the sleeper bed. In this article the author undoubtedly stands at the level of the contemporary state of the question concerning the work of the permanent way, and is acquainted with the literature of this subject; therefore it seems strange that he included in a serious article notes on his rides on locomotives, not accompanied by any measurements and representing subjective impressions, perhaps interesting only to the author himself; such notes have no place in this book.

Turning to details, one cannot fail to note that the author directly indicates that crushed stone from granite containing much feldspar should not be used, since when crushed it gives much clay. Not only is it impossible to agree with this opinion, since it lies outside the realm of practical considerations; on the contrary, it must be considered that those railways are in fortunate circumstances which, according to local conditions, can use granite crushed stone as ballast, and the use for the same purpose of crushed stone from less durable rocks can be spoken of only as an exception.

In the article the author undoubtedly displays love for the subject, a critical attitude toward all investigations, and an aspiration, not limiting himself to pointing out the shortcomings of the contemporary theory of the permanent way, to introduce independent corrections and amendments.

As an independent and interesting piece of work by the author, one must point to the laboratory determinations, under static loading, of the coefficient of the layer; and although such determinations require a correction, which the author himself also indicates, in the sense of carrying out experiments under conditions closer to reality, nevertheless the results obtained appear quite reliable and in general confirm the conclusions obtained in the experiments of the last decade on the work of the ballast in the track.

Furthermore, it is necessary to welcome the author’s idea—to introduce corrections into the value of the coefficient of the ballast layer \(C_0\) when calculating stresses in rails by Zimmermann’s formulas. Indeed, complicated calculations are performed and important conclusions are drawn with regard to permitting one or another speed of motion for a given type of rails or a given rolling stock, while at the same time the average value \(C_0 = 4\) kilograms is adopted for all the railways of Russia, with full awareness of the very great extent to which the numerical value of this coefficient affects the result of the calculation. Such corrections are indeed necessary; but one cannot agree with the author that the coefficient of the sleeper bed, first so named by Engineer Vasyutynsky (Bettungsziffer) \(C_0\), can differ so greatly from \(C\), the coefficient of elasticity of the ballast. Basing himself on Weber’s old experiments, then on an isolated and perhaps chance experiment on the Baltic Railway, and then pointing to the broad limits of Professor N. P. Petrov’s coefficient \(K\)—who, in setting these limits, did not attach them to practical conclusions—the author rather freely, depending on factors that more or less affect the resistance of the ballast layer, allows himself to vary the coefficient \(C_0\) within broad limits, without attempting even once to carry out parallel calculations of stress with the given coefficient and then with the same coefficient altered; it is likely that such calculations would have forced him to be more cautious in determining, even if only provisionally, changes in the magnitude of the numerical quantities.

Having pointed out those aspects of Engineer Yasevich’s work that must be treated critically, it should be mentioned once more that the author has presented a work not of a purely compilative character, but, on the contrary, one containing both independent investigations and well-considered views.

2. Review by A. Vasyutynsky

The printed works of F. K. Yasevich deserve, in my opinion, serious attention, revealing in the author an engineer capable and familiar with the technical literature, and a diligent investigator.

Mr. Yasevich’s article on the application of railway galvanized pipes, on the calculation of bridge supports, and on the cost of work in bridge construction contains data and calculations very useful in the design of engineering structures, and at the same time shows that their author possesses the theoretical preparation needed to solve more complex questions of structural mechanics.

In the latter of his works on the investigation of ballast, Mr. Yasevich summarizes the studies of Russian and foreign specialists relating to ballast and, in general, to the permanent way; he describes his view of the methods of observation and calculation used by various investigations, and the improvements desirable in them.

Although it is difficult to agree with some of the author’s conclusions—including the system of scores by which it is recommended to increase the coefficient of the rail bed—nevertheless one cannot fail to appreciate the labor with which he has gathered extensive material relating to the theory and practice of the permanent way, and his effort to enrich this material by means of personal experience and observation.

The description of the laboratory experiments carried out by Mr. Yasevich with the aim of determining the elasticity of various ballasts is very interesting. These experiments would have greater significance if they had been conducted under conditions closer to those in which ballast works in the track.

The author himself has drawn attention to the shortcomings in conducting experiments with models, in which the relative size of the parts does not correspond to the actual one; therefore one may hope that in the next series of experiments he will try to avoid these shortcomings, and perhaps also to bring his conclusions regarding the magnitude of the coefficient of the rail bed—which in his opinion may have very large values—into agreement with the magnitude of the ballast coefficient, which according to his experiments turns out to be very small.

Having pointed out certain merits and shortcomings of the very serious and thorough works of Engineer Yasevich, I allow myself, in conclusion, to express the opinion that these works, in general, testify very well to the beginning of his scientific activity.

I did not have the opportunity to become acquainted with Mr. Yasevich’s articles published in the journal Cement and in the Proceedings of the Congresses of Cement Technicians, since these publications were not available to me.

3. Review by S. A. Vvedensky

of the work by F. K. Yasevich, “The Point Method as Applied to Determining the Probable Service Life of Sleepers and to Assigning a Practical Coefficient of Ballast.” Moscow, 1909.

In the work under consideration the author set himself the aim of developing a new method for determining the average service life of sleepers according to the previously known conditions in which they are found. His method consists in grouping the factors affecting the performance of a sleeper, and in evaluating the influence of each of them by a numerical quantity characterizing it, taken from the data for the section of track under consideration and corrected by a coefficient—points—assessing the degree of this influence. With the enormous number of factors it is difficult to weigh each of them; F. K. Yasevich took a group and introduced into it two new designations: “stresses in the sleeper” and “practical ballast coefficient.” The first was taken into account by the general expression for the type of superstructure and the moving load; the second term belongs to the author; at the end of the article he derives the numerical value of this coefficient by the same method of points, i.e. as the sum of a series of numbers, each of which evaluates one circumstance or another.

At the beginning of the study a parallel is drawn between F. K. Yasevich’s formula and Couard’s empirical formula; since the latter gives only a conclusion from many years of practice on the Paris—Lyon—Méditerranée railway and thus contains fully definite numbers, it is suitable only for that railway, whereas the author’s method is theoretical in general, and in his first table F. K. Yasevich gives 34 separate opinions.

To acquaint ourselves with the investigation let us take the final formula on p. 58:

\[ T = h(a-c') - n[b+dk+ev+f'i+g(1000-k)-lw-mCo] \]

in it the factors affecting the performance of the sleeper are divided into two groups: 1) so-called natural ones, \(h(a-c')\)—the species of timber and the method of its treatment, as well as the climate; and 2) mechanical ones, depending only on the operation of the track, its plan and profile, and its construction. The operation of the track is taken into account only by the number of passing trains, without considering the special features in the construction of the rolling stock.

In such a grouping one cannot fail to note obscurities: 1) the coefficient \(h\) evaluates the species of timber and the method of its treatment and belongs to the first group, i.e. it does not depend on the operation of the track; whereas \(w\), which takes into account the good quality of the material, is in the second group of factors depending on operation; such an assignment of the first two qualities of timber exclusively to resistance to climatic influences, and of good quality to resistance to mechanical stresses, cannot…

S. A. Vvedensky.

...be recognized as neither correct nor definite. Secondly, the coefficient expressing the qualities of the ballast and the lower structure is placed in the second group, whereas one of the basic requirements imposed on ballast is to divert water from the sleepers in order to protect them from rotting—in other words, to mitigate the influence of climate. In general, climatic and mechanical influences are in practice so intertwined that separating them according to the principle of independence of action, as the author has done by introducing a polynomial formula, does not appear correct. As for the numerical assessment of local conditions, in the study such an assessment is given only for the plan and profile, while the assessment of the influence of climate, stresses in the sleepers, the soundness of the forest, and the average speed is made arbitrarily. In Table I, for example, the climate on the Nikolaev, Central Asian, Polesie, Vladikavkaz, and other railways is assessed by one and the same number.

The stress in the sleepers \((k)\) F. K. Yasevich takes into account as follows: “The dependence on the dynamic stress in the sleeper is also taken into account for each million poods of the indicated fictitious load; moreover, instead of calculating this stress, we agree not to introduce a correction for this factor for the conditions of the upper structure that are the best, i.e., with rails of \(32\frac{1}{2}\) pounds per running foot and with 17 sleepers in a five-sazhen rail length” (p. 61). On the same page the average speed is assessed as follows: “Dependence on the average speed may be introduced only for a certain part of this speed, since the principal freight movement on all railways takes place at almost the same speed.”

From the passages cited it is clearly evident (the same is true of the other factors as well) that local conditions are not accounted for in actual numbers multiplied by correction coefficients, as the formula expresses it; rather, the numerical value of this product is taken directly as “points.”

However, even these latter are not calculated, but are taken quite arbitrarily, even without indicating the grounds for determining the numerical value. On p. 67 of his study F. K. Yasevich characterizes the figures given by him as follows: “If one dwells on the significance of the figures in those columns where the terms not dependent on traffic are placed in Table I (i.e., columns 2–7), then it must be said that these figures may be clarified gradually and at the present time have been assigned, to some extent, by eye. It may perhaps not be entirely correct, for finding the points appearing in the remaining columns of the same table (8–16), to suppose them to be in direct dependence on traffic...

“But for lack of any theory, or even a hypothesis, on this subject, for the time being we leave in the table the indicated method of application. The same must be said of the coefficients of the indicated columns as was said above, i.e., that they have been assigned, to some extent, by eye.”

With such an assessment by the author himself of his conclusions, there is no basis for entering into an analysis of how they were obtained.

If the work of F. K. Yasevich is regarded as a “sufficiently grounded scheme” (p. 68) for obtaining these numbers, then it must be said that the author has given no path whatever to this determination, and that the scheme itself contains a number of ambiguities and contradictions; and to recommend this problem to young engineers, as F. K. Yasevich does on p. 68, is, in my opinion, risky.

Passing now to the second part of the study, the determination by the point method of the practical coefficient of the ballast layer, I must say that here too the numbers have been taken arbitrarily. On p. 77 the author admits: “With regard to these figures one should say the same as was said with respect to Table II, i.e., that they cannot be regarded as substantiated.” Here there is obviously a misprint: Table II contains statistical conclusions, while the lack of substantiation indicated above refers to Table I.

Engineer of Ways of Communication, S. Vvedensky.

4. Review of the Commission

on the works of F. K. Yasevich: “The Point Method as Applied to the Determination of the Probable Service Life of Sleepers and to the Assignment of the Practical Coefficient of Ballast.”

In the first part of this work, which concerns the service of sleepers on railways, Mr. Yasevich, having first considered Koehr’s method for determining the service life of sleepers and finding the method insufficiently simple and correct, proposes to use instead the point method. Taking the basic service life of untreated pine sleepers to be 180 months, he evaluates the influence of various factors on the duration of sleeper service by adding to, or subtracting from, this basic period the corresponding number of months (points). In the table compiled by Mr. Yasevich (Table I), which is the result of all the author’s reasoning and is to serve for determining the probable service life of sleepers on certain Russian railways, fourteen different factors are included, sufficiently fully exhausting the conditions influencing the lengthening or shortening of the service life of sleepers. Naturally, in order to take quantitative account of the influence of each factor on the duration of the service life of sleepers, it is necessary to establish a regular relation between the service life of sleepers and the influence of the factor. For this it is necessary to have either a sufficient amount of statistical data on the service of sleepers, or else a sufficient number of observations and experiments on sleepers under various conditions of their operation, or, finally, reliable

to seek, in this way, well-founded theoretical considerations. The author himself also points to the importance of establishing such a regular relation. At the beginning of his work, on page 51 (Mr. Yasevich’s article begins on page 49), he says:

“The search for quantitative relations between the influences of individual factors on a phenomenon connected with construction is necessary for engineering already in itself, since even if theory should not subsequently make use of the results obtained from observations and general calculations, they will remain valuable for practice itself. We know, after all, that without numerical data all conclusions on technical questions lose a large part of their value. All verbal definitions possess insufficient precision; results expressed not in figures are for the most part incomparable, inapplicable to other analogous cases, and cannot be used as fully for the further progress of the matter as quantitative results of observations of reality.”

However, later on, when determining the number of points accounting for the influence of the various factors, the author cites, in confirmation of the figures he proposes, neither practical nor experimental data, for lack, as he indicates, of corresponding experiments and observations, nor does he substantiate these figures by any theoretical considerations; instead he gives only general verbal definitions of the factors and their influence, and in all cases assigns the number of points approximately, by eye. By means of numerical material selected in this way, Table I was compiled. It is true that the figures obtained by the author in this table for the probable service life of sleepers are rather close to the figures of Table II, which gives the average actual service lives of sleepers. But such a similarity of the figures cannot, of course, yet indicate the correctness of the assignment of the number of points for the various factors—instead of the written series of figures, another could have been written which would have yielded the same number as a result. Moreover, Table 2 cannot serve as a standard for comparison, since, in the author’s words (page 35):

“the figures taken for deriving the average results were too few, and, what is more important, they are incomparable, since they relate to a combination of the most heterogeneous conditions.”

Mr. Yasevich’s work leaves the impression that the author wished to give only a scheme for investigating the question raised, while a detailed elaboration of it, in view of the absence of statistical and experimental data, did not enter into his intention. Apparently the author himself regards his work in the same way. On page 68 he says:

“In the foregoing I had the aim of presenting, albeit without a system, the most important data of entirely new material, bearing on that part of the question of sleeper management which relates to service—”

…sleepers laid in the track, to emphasize the necessity of verifying many established opinions in this matter and the necessity of determining the exact relationships of the influence of various factors. Since, in a difficult matter, a certain methodical approach to the work is of great help in mastering it, I wished to propose one or another sufficiently substantiated scheme. Perhaps, at least at first, it would be worth adhering to it, despite its various shortcomings, eliminating those of them that can be eliminated or corrected. I was not afraid to share the thoughts set forth here with the members of the congress and, consequently, through this means with all engineers interested in the life of the railway at the sections and in the railway administrations, knowing that among them there are many experts in the matter who will not refuse, by their communications, to supplement the information and fragments of knowledge set forth, and to correct errors and shortcomings. Many persons, especially young forces, will take up one thing or another in the above-mentioned idea and, if it is correct, will develop it for the advancement of engineering science and the improvement of our railway practice.”

From these words of the author it is evident that, in issuing the present work, he did not intend to carry out a thorough scientific investigation of the question, but wished only to give an impetus to such an investigation in a certain direction. The essence of the work is that a method of investigation is proposed which appears to the author to be simple and convenient.

However, even this simplicity and convenience remain completely unproven (taking into account, for example, the necessity of considering 14 factors, partly dependent on one another); and the foundations of the method are not motivated by either scientific or practical data.

With regard to the second part of the work, in which the same method of points is proposed for assigning the practical coefficient of ballast, it is necessary to say the very same as about the first part.

In the opinion of the commission, Mr. Yasevich’s work may serve as a scheme for further development of the question in the direction proposed by the author, and in this sense may lead to valuable results in the future, but in its present, unprocessed form it cannot be accepted as a dissertation.

T. I. Tikhonov, P. Minyaev, Ya. Nikolin.