COMPARISON, TESTING AND STATISTICAL ANALYSIS OF PRESTRESSED CONCRETE SLEEPERS MANUFACTURED FOR INDIAN RAILWAY

Abstract

A sound track is an important pre-requisite for the economic growth of the country. Concrete sleeper is the necessity of modern track all over the world to meet the challenge of higher speeds, higher density of traffic, higher axle load and long welded rails. Concrete sleeper is heavy, sturdy and capable of offering adequate lateral resistance to the track, where as wooden and metal sleepers were found to be lacking in fulfilling the requirements. Concrete is a versatile building material which can be moulded in any and size has made its impact in the field of railway engineering in the form of concrete sleeper and now a days India is in the position of producing more than one than one crore sleepers per annum after making its nascent beginning in 1969. The first experiment in production of concrete sleepers was made by Swiss Railway in 1904, French Railway in 1913 and German Railway in 1922. In India concrete sleeper are being manufactured by using either “longline method” or “stress bench method”. Concrete sleeper provides greater stability, best suited for machine maintenance, track circuited area and avoids fire, corrosion, theft etc. Sleeper, after rail, is the most important component of track superstructure in conventional track. Keeping track geometry, bearing loads acted from rail and transferring to the ballast is the main duty of sleeper. Their quality conditions have considerable influence on geometry quality. Moreover, track maintenance costs affected by this element due to their higher number. For this, in order to reduce operation & maintenance volume and, in the other hand, for more recognition of concrete sleepers used in Indian Railways, some studies and field investigations carried out on concrete sleepers and its results expressed as categorization of concrete sleeper failures. This project, evaluates effective factors and the reasons of their creation, while considering failures and conventional defects during sleeper service life (including production stage, transportation, construction and operation), and proposed some approaches for their reduction.