Lighting Concrete Production Features and Prospects of Application in Railway Construction

Abstract

The prospect of light-conducting concrete in railway construction is associated with an increase in recent years in interest in creating a barrier-free environment, including at railway stations, platforms, pedestrian crossings, in pedestrian tunnels, and so on. The material makes it possible to duplicate marking elements in hazardous areas of passenger movement at night without breaking the material environment, which will facilitate care for it in the winter.
 When creating innovative pedestrian crossings (equipped with interactive lanes that duplicate the traffic light for pedestrians), the use of light-conducting concrete will increase the antivandistance of the engineering arrangement. Unlike polymeric materials, the litracon material considered in the article does not change its properties under the influence of high temperatures, is not susceptible to instantaneous violation of the integrity and loss of surface properties under mechanical stresses.
 The high cost of the material does not yet allow its widespread use in the construction of railway infrastructure facilities on an industrial scale, however, with an increase in the production of optical fiber (the most expensive component of light-conducting concrete) and the search for new technologies that reduce the cost of its production, a drop in prices for this type of raw material is naturally expected.
 One of the areas of application of light-conducting concrete can be transport construction and landscaping of on-site territories (sidewalks, stairs, platforms) in terms of increasing their interactivity in the dark.
 The article proposes a composition (No. 1) corresponding to the compressive strength and tensile strength when bending, the requirements for products used in railway construction, for which light-conductive concrete can be used. The problem of light-transmitting concrete in the maintenance of railway infrastructure in the Republic of Belarus is being raised for the first time