Failures of Railway Concrete Sleepers During Service Life

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 B70 sleepers used in Iranian Railways, some studies and field investigations carried out on concrete sleepers and its results expressed as categorization of concrete sleeper failures. This paper, 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.