Concrete sleeper

The concrete sleeper or concrete tie is typical railway sleeper, it is made from concrete. The cement, sand, stone, water and admixture are mixed into a mixture at a certain ratio, and put mixture into a combined model with steel wire or steel bars and sleeper fittings. Generally, concrete sleeper include vibration forming, steam curing, relaxing steel wire or steel bars and etc.

The concrete sleeper is a type of railway track materials. The railway sleeper not only supports the steel rail, but also maintains the position of the rail, and transmits the huge pressure transmitted by the steel rail to the track bed. It must have some flexibility and elasticity. When the train passes, concrete sleepers are properly deformed to cushion the pressure, and the train must be restored as much as possible after the train.

Advantages of concrete sleepers

• It has the advantages of saving wood, long service life, good laying quality, low maintenance workload and low cost.
• It is significantly superior to wood in high-speed, heavy-duty, seamless and other railway applications.
• On seamless lines, the stability of reinforced concrete sleepers is 15 to 20% higher than that of wooden sleepers. Therefore, it is especially suitable for high-speed passenger lines. For example, Japan's Shinkansen and Russia's high-speed trunks are laying it.

Of course, concrete sleepers also have disadvantages, especially weights that are much larger than wooden sleeper. Therefore, it is not suitable to use in unstable roadbeds and new roadbeds; in areas with frost heaving in winter, concrete sleeper is generally not allowed to be used; it is best not to use large quantities of concrete sleepers in the railway section for transportation of coal and ore, or heavily polluted roadbeds.

Types of concrete sleepers

• According to the structure, concrete sleepr is divided into integral type, combined type and semi-sleeper; 
• Concrete sleeper is divided into reinforced concrete sleeper and pre-stressed reinforced concrete sleeper according to the reinforcement; 
• According to the pre-stressing application, it is divided into pre-tension method, post-tension method and continuous reinforcement method; 
• According to the rail gauge, concrete sleeper is divided into 1435mm standard gauge and 600, 762, 1000mm narrow gauge concrete sleepers.