Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Review Of Failures Of Railway Sleepers And Its Consequences, Wahid Ferdous, Allan Manalo, Thiru Aravinthan, Alex Remennikov

Wahid Ferdous

Railway sleeper is one of the important structure that having problems with high maintenance and replacement costs owing to its early failure. This paper presents the causes of failures of the traditional railway sleepers particularly timber, concrete and steel, and discussed its effect on the railway industry. The review of literature indicates fungal decay, end splitting and termite attack are the typical causes of timber sleeper failure. In case of concrete sleeper, deteriorations are observed because of rail seat abrasion, longitudinal cracking, high impact force and chemical attack. Failures in steel sleepers are mainly due to corrosion and fatigue cracking …