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Reliability-Based Conversion Of A Structural Design Code For Railway Prestressed Concrete Sleepers, A M. Remennikov, Martin Murray, Sakdirat Kaewunruen

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part A

"Ballasted railway track is very suitable for heavy-rail networks because of its many superior advantages in design, construction, short- and long-term maintenance, sustainability, and life cycle cost. An important part of the railway track system, which distributes the wheel load to the formation, is the railway sleeper. Improved knowledge has raised concerns about design techniques for prestressed concrete (PC) sleepers. Most current design codes for these rely on allowable stresses and material strength reductions. However, premature cracking of PC sleepers has been found in railway tracks. The major cause of cracking is the infrequent but high-magnitude wheel loads produced by …