Occasional paper on beneficial damage : a new concept for fracture toughness enhancement and applications to railway engineering, Rockhampton, Queensland, Australia 30 September 2003

"This paper examines a novel method of enhancing the fracture toughness of railheads with embedded cracks. The enhanced fracture toughness would enable trains to operate at normal speed with no requirement of reducing axle loads. Although the method of beneficial damage introduced in this paper appears attractive, its application is affected by the non availability of technology to induce damage."--p. 2.