Mechanical behavior of recycled reinforced polyamide railway fasteners

Abstract Modern railway tracks use short‐fiber glass reinforced polyamide to inject insulating and mechanically resistant fasteners to connect the rails to the sleepers. Some of this material is later withdrawn, due either to defective production or to breakage in service. The recovery of the material for its later re‐use would lead to a great saving, from both an environmental and an economic viewpoint. Mechanical recycling is a simple, economic process that only requires the crushing of the material and its subsequent molding, without the need for any chemical treatments. However, it has some drawbacks; as with any kind of recycling, there is a certain loss of material quality with some degradation of its properties. In this work, the physical and mechanical results for fasteners injected with recycled material are compared to others injected with pure material. The results show that the use of recycled fasteners is limited in‐service by working conditions that increase the thermoplastic material temperature above its critical glass transition temperature, T_g. POLYM. COMPOS., 31:1142–1149, 2010. © 2009 Society of Plastics Engineers