Static behaviour of glass fibre reinforced novel composite sleepers for mainline railway track

This study proposed three new railway sleeper concepts for a mainline track and investigated experimentally and numerically to understand their behaviours. These sleepers are fabricated with (a) a rubberised cement concrete block embedded in Particulate Filled Resin (PFR) and reinforced with Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer (GFRP) bars (Concept-1), (b) cement concrete block reinforced with GFRP bars (Concept-2), and (c) GFRP pultruded sections filled with rubberised cement concrete and embedded in PFR (Concept-3). The structural behaviour of the railway sleepers is evaluated experimentally under five-point static bending and is verified by Beams on Elastic Foundation analysis. Moreover, an in-depth investigation of the in-track behaviour of sleeper was conducted using finite element simulation. Results show that the flexural properties of sleeper Concept-1 is equivalent to a recycled plastic sleeper, Concept-2 is between a recycled plastic and a softwood timber while Concept-3 is identical to a softwood timber sleeper. The results from this study generated new composite sleeper concepts from a price point that makes them commercially viable and meet structural performance to replace existing timber sleepers in a mainline railway track.

Automated summary

This study proposed three new railway sleeper concepts and evaluated them experimentally and numerically. The results show that these new concepts have the potential to replace traditional wooden railway sleepers in terms of structural performance and commercial viability.