Structural performances of an eco-friendly prestressed concrete sleeper

Abstract This study focuses on investigating structural performances of a newly developed eco-friendly prestressed concrete sleeper for railway tracks in South Korea. An eco-friendly concrete has been developed by authors at the Korea Railroad Research Institute (KRRI) with the aims of reducing carbon dioxide (CO 2 ) emissions and finding a replacement of natural sand for fine aggregate. Direct and indirect CO 2 emissions are one of the main environmental issues in the concrete industry. Reducing the amount of cement usage is beneficial to address the issue of CO 2 emissions in the concrete industry. Another environmental issue in the concrete industry in South Korea is the shortage of natural sand as a fine aggregate. So there is a need for finding a replacement of natural sand. The authors utilized two types of recycled industrial byproducts (slags) to handle the environmental issues of railway prestressed concrete sleepers: (1) ground granulated blast furnace (GGBF) slag, which replaces 30% of Portland Type III cement and (2) electric arc furnace (EAF) oxidizing slag, which entirely replaces natural fine aggregate. With the recycled industry slags, an eco-friendly concrete was developed with a high initial compressive strength at prestressing release (