Network Rail owns and operates Britain's railway infrastructure, and has been a leading client in the adoption of fibre-reinforced polymers (FRP), initially for bridge strengthening and then for other civil engineering related applications. It now owns over 20 FRP-strengthened bridges, three fully FRP bridge, and several fibre-reinforced polymer platform decks, and has recently installed the first known application of an FRP secondary decking system for carrying railway live loading. Other applications of FRP are under development. This paper describes the background to the adoption of FRP for railway civil engineering, and the safeguards put in place to ensure satisfactory performance. A number of completed schemes are used to illustrate typical applications, and those planned in the immediate future are described. The paper also looks briefly at FRP related research supported by Network Rail.
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September 2009
Research Article|
September 01 2009
Fibre-reinforced polymer in railway civil engineering
B. Bell, I Eng, MIET, CMILT
B. Bell, I Eng, MIET, CMILT
Senior Civil Engineer (Bridges)
Network Rail Infrastructure Ltd, London, UK
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Publisher: Emerald Publishing
Revision Received:
August 08 2008
Accepted:
December 24 2008
Online ISSN: 1755-0785
Print ISSN: 1755-0777
© 2009 Thomas Telford Ltd
2009
Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Engineering and Computational Mechanics (2009) 162 (3): 119–126.
Article history
Revision Received:
August 08 2008
Accepted:
December 24 2008
Citation
Bell B (2009), "Fibre-reinforced polymer in railway civil engineering". Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers - Engineering and Computational Mechanics, Vol. 162 No. 3 pp. 119–126, doi: https://doi.org/10.1680/eacm.2009.162.3.119
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