Concrete sleepers are one of the most important components of a railway track sys-tem. Fatigue damage to a prestressed concrete sleeper is mainly due to the accumula-tive deterioration caused by the repeated wheel-rail load interaction. However, re-search on fatigue life of prestressed concrete sleepers for urban railways is limited. Therefore, the objective of this study is to determine the fatigue life of prestressed concrete sleepers for urban railways. In this study, we calculate fatigue life based on theory. Then we set up a load model in the laboratory and a fatigue test is carried out to determine the fatigue life of a type of sleeper for urban railways. The deviation ratio between the results of theoretical calculations and experiment results of sleepers for the cracked load is about 13% ÷ 14% and the fatigue life is about 8% ÷ 11%. The values of cracked load and fatigue life in theoretical calculations are smaller than those of experimental results.
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