Relationships between wheel/rail interface impact and railseat flexural moment of railway prestressed concrete sleepers

Wheel/rail interactions often generate interface impact forces to railway tracks due to the wheel/rail abnormalities. Accordingly, the damage of track components, especially for the concrete sleepers, is often observed and unpredictable as its current design concept relies mostly on the quasi-static behaviour. Limit states design concept then provides more logical entity for the design approach associated with the behaviours of such sleepers. This paper presents the experimental and analytical investigations, in order to evaluate the relationships between wheel/rail impact forces and resultant railseat flexural moment of railway prestressed concrete sleepers. It enables and enhances the methodology to analyse and design for the prestressed concrete sleepers at ultimate limit states