Viability Study of the Application of Bi-Block Concrete Sleepers as a Solution for Technical Landfills

Abstract

Transition zones, specifically embankment structures on railway tracks, are recurrently damaged by high-speed rail traffic, thus producing abrupt variations in the track vertical stiffness. The main objective of this work is to study the implementation of Construction and Demolition (C&D) wastes, specifically Bi-Block (BB) concrete sleepers, to minimize the issues related to the differences in stiffness along the area of the technical landfills, using unconventional environmental solutions. The use of BB wastes can reduce the environmental impacts caused by the construction sector. The studied solutions produce similar stiffness levels to traditional solutions. The Multicriteria Decision Support Methodology for the Relative Sustainability Assessment of Building Technologies (MARS-SC) allows concluding that the studied solutions are more sustainable than the traditional ones.

Keywords

• bi-block concrete sleepers
• life cycle assessment
• numerical modeling
• railway
• technical landfills
• transition zones