Pages: 14-26

Abstract

Wood is one of the earliest materials that has been used for making railway sleepers. The sensitivity of wood to atmosphere and fire and consequently their early destruction lead to the application of novel materials such as concrete to cover the deficiencies of wood. Although concrete solely does not have high tensile strength and after a while, with the existence of microcracks, it would be destroyed. In addition, Thus, wherever rapid vibration damping is required, additives should be applied or the sleepers’ material must be changed. In this study, by application of fuzzy algorithm and membership functions, the most suitable material for construction of sleepers based on absorbing energy is investigated. The aforementioned approach requires preparing a list of candidate materials. For instance, if the selected material is reinforced concrete with basalt fibers, the best proportion of concrete and fibers should be calculated. The applied equations are Euler equations for two fixed-end beam and American standard is used for changing load. Moreover, in order to represent the selected material and detailed examination, appropriate finite element software is applied. The final choices for the materials of sleepers are reached by the combination of the software results. In addition, the study of the displacement and stress in reinforced sleeper based on the selected material is done and due to negligible displacement and positioning of the stress in compressive direction, the weak point of concrete in tensile load capacity is covered and the capacity of vibrating load in the proposed model is enhanced.