Development of Cost-Effective Railway Sleepers: A Detailed Study

The scope of this project helps to develop a new sustainable and cost-effective design solution for railway sleepers, through rigours analysis and testing of many new design samples using alternative structural materials. The specific objectives are:

• To conduct a further literature review for identifying new sleeper materials and designs.
• To carry out material and sleeper sample testing at CQU labs considering static and dynamic loadings.
• To perform structural analysis and simulation using finite element codes and Matlab software.
• To compare laboratory and field tests and simulation data.
• To determine the optimum cost-effective sleeper design.
• To develop a computer-based design tool for optimum performance-based sleeper designs.