In 1986, the FIP Commission on Prefabrication issued the state-of-art report "Concrete Railway Sleepers", which included design considerations, manufacturing methods, rail fastening systems and field performance. During the two decades since that report, precast concrete has gained importance in the field of railway track systems for plain track, switches and crossings, tunnels and other applications. Developments in production methods for concrete sleepers in switch and crossing layouts to cope with the complex geometry and the industry's confidence in their performance have contributed to the huge increase in the use of this type of sleeper. The use of slab track for high-speed track has also grown, particularly where either new track is built or where existing track is renewed and long periods of track possession are possible. There has also been progress in the development of plant and equipment for the installation, renewal and maintenance of concrete sleepered track. With machines now able to replace existing track at a rate of 5000 sleepers (over 3 km track) per day, choosing concrete sleepers can reduce the time on site, meaning tracks can be reopened quickly whilst reducing labour requirements and costs. Today, precast concrete is considered to be the best performing and preferred material for railway sleepers, due to the following factors: long-term durability; improved geometric retention of track and greater weight vital for high-speed and heavy freight lines; improved elasticity of track; improved ride quality; low first cost; minimum life cycle cost; low cost of maintenance; environmental friendliness - no chemical treatment required and can be recycled. As all aspects of precast concrete railway track systems, from design through manufacture to installation and maintenance, have progressed since the publication of the FIP report, an update was considered timely, in order to provide a synthesis of currently available information. This new edition covers quality, design, production, durability, maintenance and environmental considerations, and includes survey on the use of precast concrete track systems in over 30 countries.

TCRP report 155 provides guidelines and descriptions for the design of various common types of light rail transit (LRT) track. The track structure types include ballasted track, direct fixation ("ballastless") track, and embedded track. The report considers the characteristics and interfaces of vehicle wheels and rail, tracks and wheel gauges, rail sections, alignments, speeds, and track moduli. The report includes chapters on vehicles, alignment, track structures, track components, special track work, aerial structures/bridges, corrosion control, noise and vibration, signals, traction power, and the integration of LRT track into urban streets.

Due to increasing traffic flows the extension of transport infrastructure with rail roads and high speed lines is an ongoing process worldwide. Ballastless track systems with concrete slabs are used more and more. Following the first trials in the 1970s and more than four decades of R&D work on ballastless track, the level of development is such that it can be confirmed that ballastless track is suitable for use as an alternative to ballasted track. This book makes a contribution to the state of the art of ballastless track by describing the basics for designing the ballastless track. Important advice is provided regarding the construction of ballastless track on earthworks and in tunnels. There is also a description of the technical history of the development of ballastless track on bridges and the ensuing findings for bridge design. The state of the art of ballastless track for switches, important information on details concerning drainage, transitions, accessibility for road vehicles and experience gleaned from maintenance round off the work. Selected chapters from the German concrete yearbook are now being published in the new English "Beton-Kalender Series" for the benefit of an international audience. Since it was founded in 1906, the Ernst & Sohn "Beton-Kalender" has been supporting developments in reinforced and prestressed concrete. The aim was to publish a yearbook to reflect progress in "ferro-concrete" structures until - as the book's first editor, Fritz von Emperger (1862-1942), expressed it - the "tempestuous development" in this form of construction came to an end. However, the "Beton-Kalender" quickly became the chosen work of reference for civil and structural engineers, and apart from the years 1945-1950 has been published annually ever since.

The Model Code for Concrete Structures is intended to serve as a basis for future codes. It takes into account new developments with respect to concrete structures, the structural material concrete and new ideas for the requirements to be formulated for structures in order to achieve optimum behaviour according to new insights and ideas. It is also intended as a source of information for updating existing codes or developing new codes for concrete structures. At the same time, the Model Code is intended as an operational document for normal design situations and structures.

To date, very little has been published on the topic of corrugated-steel-web bridges. fib Bulletin 77 offers the global engineering community a first complete overview of this fascinating technology. The shear capacity of corrugated-steel web began to be studied in Japan in 1965 and resulted in the use of corrugated steel in steel-girder webs as a replacement for web stiffeners. After Japan laid the groundwork for the technology, France built the first composite bridge with corrugated-steel webs and upper and lower concrete slabs in the 1980s. Composite bridges had already been popular in France but engineers found that concrete slab creep meant that prestressing force spread into the steel plates, causing high losses. Corrugated-steel web, which reduces axial stiffness, was welcomed as a solution to this problem and several bridges were designed and built with this technology. Building on France’s composite technology, Japan began developing corrugated-web precast box-girder bridges in the 1990s and today has over 140 corrugated-web bridges, by far the largest number for any country in the world. Japanese engineers have come a long way in solving issues such as fatigue and ultimate load behaviour and have made good use of corrugated-steel web’s advantages for bridge building, which include reduced self weight (of approximately 15% compared with the weight of an ordinary concrete box-girder bridge), economy and improved construction processes. fib Bulletin 77: Corrugated-steel-web bridges covers numerous examples of bridges in Japan and France as well as an in-depth case study and analysis of a large corrugated-steel-web bridge in Germany. This publication offers designers, proprietors, contractors and architects alike relevant technical and theoretical information on construction processes along with ideas for future development.

Reliable performance of beams and slabs in shear is essential for the safety and also for the serviceability of reinforced concrete structures. A possible failure in shear is usually a brittle failure, which underlines the importance of the correct specification of the load carrying capacity in shear. The knowledge of performance in shear is steadily developing and it is now obvious that older structures were not always designed in accordance with contemporary requirements. The increasing load – mainly on bridges – requires the assessment of existing structures, often followed by their strengthening. An appropriate understanding of actual performance of concrete structures in shear is therefore of primary interest. The workshop which was held in Zürich in 2016 brought together a significant number of outstanding specialists working in the field of shear design, who had a chance to exchange their opinions and proposals for improving the current knowledge of shear behaviour in beams and slabs. The specialists came from different parts of the world, which made the workshop general and representative. The workshop was organised by fib Working Party 2.2.1 “Shear in Beams” (convened by O. Bayrak), which is a part of fib Commission 2 "Analysis and Design". Individual contributions mainly address shear in beams with low transversal reinforcement. It is crucial because many existing structures lack such reinforcement. Different theories, e.g. Critical Shear Crack Theory (CSCT), Modified Compression Field Theory (MCFT), Multi-Action Shear Model (MASM), etc. were presented and compared with procedures used in selected national codes or in the fib Model Code 2010. The models for shear design were often based to a great extent on empirical experience. The refined presented models tend to take into account the physical mechanisms in structures more effectively. A brittle behaviour in shear requires not only to check the equilibrium and failure load, but also to follow the progress of failure, including the crack development and propagation, stress redistribution, etc. The significance of the size effect – which causes the nominal strength of a large structure to be smaller than that of a small structure – was pointed out. Nowadays, the fibre reinforcement is used more than before since it allows significant labour costs savings in the construction industry. The contribution of fibres is suitable for shear transfer. It is very convenient that not only ordinary fibre reinforced elements were addressed but also the UHPFRC beams. The production of this new material is indeed growing, while the development of design recommendations has not been sufficiently fast. Fatigue resistance of structures with low shear reinforcement is also an important issue, which was also addressed in this bulletin. It cannot be neglected in prestressed bridges, which are exposed to dynamic loads. A comprehensive understanding of the shear behaviour is necessary. Although many laboratory experiments are carried out, they are suitable only to a limited extent. New testing methods are being developed and show promising results, e.g. digital image correlation. An actual structure performance should rather be tested on a large scale, ideally on real structures under realistic loading conditions.ii The papers presented in the bulletin are a basis for the discussion in view of the development of updated design rules for the new fib Model Code (MC2020), which is currently under preparation. fib Bulletins like this one, dealing with shear, help to transfer knowledge from research to design practice. The authors are convinced that it will lead to better new structures design of as well as to savings and to a safety increase in older existing structures, whose future is often decided now.

Standards for specifying and ensuring the durability of new concrete structures are commonly of the prescriptive kind. fib Bulletin 76: Benchmarking of deemed-to-satisfy provisions in standards - Durability of reinforced concrete structures exposed to chlorides presents the benchmarking of a number of rules for chloride-induced corrosion as given in national codes such as European, US and Australian standards. This new benchmark determines the reliability ranges in the chloride-induced depassivation of rebar if the deemed-to-satisfy rules of different countries are taken into consideration. It does not only involve (probabilistic) calculations using input mainly based on short-term and rapid laboratory-test data but also involves input based on an independent assessment of existing structures. The reliability analyses are carried out using the probabilistic design approach for chloride-induced corrosion presented in fib Bulletin 34: Model Code for Service Life Design (2006), fib Model Code for Concrete Structures 2010 and ISO 16204:2012. The work compares the calculated reliability ranges thus determined with the target reliabilities proposed by current specifications and, based on the comparison, offers a proposal for the improvement of deemed-to-satisfy rules and specifications. fib Bulletin 76 presents and discusses in detail the input data for the examined model parameters and offers an extensive annexe documenting the values of the individual parameters used in the analyses. It thus provides a reliable database for the performance-based probabilistic service-life design of concrete structures exposed to chlorides, be they in the form of salt fog, sea water or de-icing salts.

The concept of post-tensioning has been recognized for over a century. Interestingly, early developments started with external tendons, but failed to be recognized as a major construction technique for two main reasons: - Low tensile performance of early steels in combination with a poor knowledge of concrete creep and shrinkage properties, - Lack of a durable corrosion protection. With the technological progress, external tendons became increasingly popular in the 1980’s, as a post-tensioning method enabling inspection and, if necessary, replacement of tendons without demolition of structural members. Towards the end of the last century, more than 50 bridges have been built with external tendons, first in France and soon gaining traction in other countries. FIP published a state-of the-art report in May 1996 to provide a review of the application of external tendons, describing specific material problems and methods for dealing with them. 25 years have passed and, while the engineering principles covered by the FIP report remain unchanged, the context has evolved: - External tendons and construction methods have kept evolving with better materials, ever longer spans, and tighter schedules. - Normalization frame in Europe changed, Severe durability issues have occurred in some countries from which the industry can extract good knowledge of the causes and how to avoid similar problems in the future. This new fib bulletin has been prepared with the aim to reflect the current state of the art and encompass the knowledge amassed in the last quarter of century with chapters covering from the design and approval of systems and materials to installation, quality control and monitoring. The last chapter is a compilation of structures worldwide covering all sorts of materials, typologies and construction methods, which might be a source of inspiration for owners and designers alike.