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Relationship Between Impact Energy And Fracture Toughness Of Prestressed Concrete Railway Sleepers, Sakdirat Kaewunruen, Alexander Remennikov Nov 2011

Relationship Between Impact Energy And Fracture Toughness Of Prestressed Concrete Railway Sleepers, Sakdirat Kaewunruen, Alexander Remennikov

Alex Remennikov

The prestressed concrete sleepers (or railroad ties), which are installed in railway track systems as the crosstie beam support, are designed to carry and transfer the wheel loads from the rails to the ground. It is well known that railway tracks are subject to impact loading conditions, which are attributable to the train operations with either wheel or rail abnormalities such as flat wheels, dipped rails, etc. These loads are of very high magnitude but short duration. In addition, there exists the potential of repeated load experience during the design life of prestressed concrete sleepers. Prestressed concrete has played a …


Dynamic Design Guidelines For Prestressed Concrete Sleepers, Alexander Remennikov, Martin H. Murray, Sakdirat Kaewunruen Nov 2011

Dynamic Design Guidelines For Prestressed Concrete Sleepers, Alexander Remennikov, Martin H. Murray, Sakdirat Kaewunruen

Alex Remennikov

Current design philosophy, outlined in AS 1085.14, is based on the analysis of permissible stresses resulting from quasi-static wheel loads and essentially the static response of concrete sleepers. In general, cracking can incur when the bottom fibre stress is larger than tensile strength of concrete. Premature cracking of prestressed concrete sleepers has been detected in railway tracks. The major cause of cracking is the infrequent but high-magnitude wheel loads produced by a small percentage of “out-of-round” wheels or railhead surface defects, which are crudely accounted for in AS 1085.14 by a single load factor. Based on the current design method, …