Exploring microscopic and mechanical tools to uncover the anisotropic damage evolution of prestressed concrete sleepers affected by internal swelling reactions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This work examined the anisotropic behaviour of internal swelling reactions (ISRs), specifically alkali–silica reaction (ASR) and delayed ettringite formation, in prestressed concrete sleepers retrieved from a northern Brazilian railroad. The research highlights the role of restraint, driven by prestress forces and the sleeper’s geometry, in ISR-induced damage progression. Visual inspection, damage rating index analysis, stiffness damage tests and scanning electron microscopy with energy dispersive spectroscopy were used to evaluate cracking patterns, damage extent, mechanical properties loss and the chemical composition of ISR products. The results indicate that restraint influences crack propagation, the interplay of mechanisms and damage anisotropy, with the shoulders of the sleepers exhibiting greater deterioration than the restrained centres. Chemical analyses revealed variations in ASR gel and ettringite composition, which were related to swelling potential and damage severity. These findings emphasise the influence of anisotropy in ISR-affected members and underscore its importance in guiding maintenance strategies for ISR-affected sleepers.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame distilled prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. Learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and 10,348 direct Gemma labels. Candidate is the union of thresholded teacher heads; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels or direct frontier model labels.
Codex and Gemma teacher scores by category
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one teacher head, not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".