Creep and Shrinkage Effects on Railway Prestressed Concrete Sleepers

Durability and long term behaviours of railway prestressed concrete sleepers depend largely on their creep and shrinkage responses. Many investigators in the past have proposed various material models to predict creep and shrinkage but those were mostly based on general reinforced concrete concept. The popular uses of prestressed concrete in long span bridges, stadiums, silos and confined nuclear power plants have led to a concern of practitioners whether those existing predictive models could be realistically applied to prestressed concrete. Due to high initial elastic shortening in prestressed concrete, the creep and shrinkage effects should be critically re-evaluated in flexural members. This study investigates and compares a variety of methods to evaluate creep and shrinkage effects in railway prestressed concrete sleepers. Comparison between design codes of European Standard EUROCODE2, American Standard ACI and Australian Standard AS3600-2009 provides the insight into the time-dependent performance of concrete sleepers. The outcome of this study will help rail track engineers to better design and maintain railway infrastructure, improving asset management efficacy.