Adaptive Prestressing System for Concrete Crossties

A new prestressing system, named Adaptive Prestressing System, has been proven in this study to be an innovative technique that holds great promise as a transformative, more efficient, and safer prestressing method for concrete crossties in railway systems.

The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 33: Adaptive Prestressing System for Concrete Crossties details this system, which utilizes a unique characteristic of a class of smart materials known as Shape Memory Alloys (SMA). Through heating, an SMA can recover its original shape after being excessively deformed beyond its elastic range.