Adaptive Prestressing System for Concrete Crossties: Prototype Development

Prestressing systems for railroad concrete crossties originated from the need to redistribute and localize prestressing forces to regions where they are required and, thus, optimize the design and counteract the appearance of the predominant cracking patterns.

The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 46: Adaptive Prestressing System for Concrete Crossties: Prototype Development details a product that features railroad concrete crossties that incorporate a novel prestressing approach. This approach combines the conventional post-tensioning system with the prestressing forces exerted by the recovery stress of shape memory alloys after their shape memory target is triggered.