Strength Behavior of Prestressed Concrete Sleepers with Steel Slag Partial Replacement

Prestressed concrete sleepers (PCS) are very popular and commonly used by Indian Railways. This research is aimed at studying the behavior of concrete sleepers made with steel slag as a partial replacement for traditional cement concrete. A pre-stressed concrete railway sleeper was made using energy-optimizing furnace (EOF) steel slag, a byproduct in the steel manufacturing process, partially in the place of coarse aggregate, following the Indian Railways Standard (T39-85) for sleepers. EOF steel slag coarse aggregates were subjected to a few tests, including those for chemical resistance, soundness and alkali reactivity and the results were found to be satisfactory. Compared to the traditional concrete mix, the compressive strength is increased by about 20%. It paves the way to utilize the discarded steel slag for manufacturing cost-effective prestressed railway sleepers.