Concrete sleepers are essential components of railroad infrastructure, yet their service life has been reduced by one-third due to deterioration caused by internal swelling reactions (ISR), leading a major Brazilian railroad to replace millions of sleepers within a decade. This study investigates the reliability of various non-destructive testing (NDT) techniques to estimate damage levels in concrete sleepers. The methods evaluated include surface hardness testing, stress wave propagation, electromagnetic wave propagation using ground-penetrating radar (GPR), electrical resistivity, and resonant frequency. These techniques were applied to assess sleepers diagnosed as affected by alkali-silica reaction (ASR) and delayed ettringite formation (DEF) at different deterioration degrees. Although findings indicate that most NDT methods are limited and unreliable for quantifying ISR-induced damage, resonant frequency testing combined with energy dissipation analysis provided the highest accuracy across all damage stages and was able to capture microstructural changes before significant expansion occurred. These results support the use of vibration-based screening tools to enhance early detection and guide condition assessment of railroad infrastructure, helping to reduce the premature replacement of ISR-affected concrete sleepers.
Medeiros et al. (Thu,) studied this question.
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