Chinese Railway Research Articles

Understanding China’s infrastructure activities in Africa through artistic practice and exhibition

The infrastructure-led development model initiated by China under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) has faced domestic and international challenges. By focusing on a national travelling art exhibition featuring Chinese railway construction in Africa in 2023, this paper examines the role that curatorial and exhibition practices can play in (re)shaping public geopolitical understandings of China-Africa relations. Exhibiting over 200 artworks collected from both China and Africa, this art programme not only forms a nuanced, personal and storied narrative of China’s overseas development work in Africa but also tactically responds to current internal and external criticism of the Chinese government’s global ambitions channelled through the BRI. This work extends the ongoing interest geographers have at the intersection of the visual arts and critical geopolitics.

Temporal-Spatial Analysis of Chinese Railway Efficiency Under CO2 Emissions: A Malmquist–Network Data Envelopment Analysis Model

Temporal-Spatial Analysis of Chinese Railway Efficiency Under CO2 Emissions: A Malmquist–Network Data Envelopment Analysis Model

Integrated train timetable with supply–demand interactions at the Chinese high-speed railway

In traditional Chinese railway operations, train timetable and unit assignment are usually separated from pricing and seat allocation, resulting in a decrease in revenue and an increase in operating costs. In this paper, we study the integrated problem of train timetable, unit assignment, pricing, and seat allocation, where passenger choice behavior is modeled by the multinomial logit (MNL) model. This integration enables us to explicitly capture supply–demand interactions. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear programming model with the objective of maximizing total profit. By converting the MNL model into its equivalent convex form, we recast the model as a tractable reformulation, allowing the use of a general-purpose solver to solve practical-sized instances. Based on real data from high-speed railway lines in China, three sets of case studies are conducted to validate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed approach.

Good intentions gone awry: Rail lines and inner‐city development

AbstractThis study explored the impact of transportation systems in urban areas on economic activity. We examined the effect of traditional Chinese railway construction fencing on urban spatial development using nighttime luminance and railway data from prefecture‐level cities. The study found that the fencing effect exacerbated uneven development on either side of the railway, especially in economically underdeveloped areas. These results were supported by different measures of development and a placebo test. The fencing effect was also found to affect the location of newly registered firms and the total factor productivity of industrial firms, leading to unbalanced growth on either side of the railway.

Memory, Identity and Cross-Cultural Communication: The Evolution of the Image of Chinese Railway Workers in Canada and the Reconstruction of Multiculturalism

International migrants confront many new challenges from the impact of global populism and geopolitics, but we also see the growth of a new identity culture. The Chinese community in Canada constructs its identity through the collective memory of the image of Chinese railway workers, and realizes the cross-cultural communication of a new identity culture in the course of the interaction of symbolic cultural practices. Since the 1980s, the image of Chinese railway workers has changed from “the indispensable evil” to “pioneers in nation-building” and “a tragic group subjected to injustice.” This is a product of the collective memory of the Chinese ethnic group’s pursuit of identity in Canada’s multicultural reconstruction. The Chinese ethnic group has reshaped an image of Chinese railway workers that has been widely disseminated through cross-cultural means. They have aimed at gaining social acceptance and fundamental recognition of a Chinese-Canadian identity with the help of their “native cultural heritage and historical resources” in Canada. The construction of this identity culture through collective memory has consolidated the foundations of multiculturalism.

High-speed train drivers’ human error under fatigue and stress: the role of situation awareness and individual differences

Fatigue and stress are critical variables that impair railway train drivers’ safety performance, and individual differences may influence these effects. This study investigates how fatigue and stress affect high-speed train drivers’ human error and the role of individual differences. We hypothesised that situation awareness (SA) mediates the effects of fatigue and stress on human error, and individual differences (age and work experience) moderate these effects. We surveyed 1,391 male drivers from eight Chinese railway bureaus and used PROCESS Macro for data analysis. The results revealed that fatigue and stress increased human error, directly and indirectly through SA. Age and work experience moderated the effect of fatigue and stress on SA, respectively. Older drivers had better SA under high fatigue, while more experienced drivers had better SA under high stress. These findings can inform more tailored safety management strategies to lower human error and enhance the safety of high-speed train operations.

Estimating the functional impacts associated with rainfall-induced hazards for Chinese railway system: fragility, risk and its uncertainty

Estimating the functional impacts associated with rainfall-induced hazards for Chinese railway system: fragility, risk and its uncertainty

Damage and fracture investigation of self-compacting concrete in the filling layer of CRTS-III using three-point bending tests

Literature about filling layer self-compacting concrete (FLSCC) has indicated that FLSCC plays a crucial role in its application to Chinese railway track system III (CRTS-III). It is apparent that the damage characteristics of FLSCC have not been clearly investigated, as the actual working conditions are not considered enough. There exists a remaining gap about the mechanical properties and fracture behaviors of FLSCC under bending loads. In order to fill this gap, in this study, three-point bending (TPB) tests on the FLSCC beams with precast notches were performed based on the real bending situation of FLSCC in CRTS-III. Acoustic emission (AE), strain gauges and a digital camera were utilized to monitor the fresh evolutionary laws of micro- and macro-cracks as well as the corresponding damage morphology. The study presents that the monitored load-crack mouth opening displacement (P-CMPD) curves, load-strain (P-ε) curves and AE activity curves all exhibited similar distributions, including four stages with increasing bending loads. In term of the AE activities, the first apparent crack in the interior and warning point of failure can be detected by analyzing the captured AE activities of the FLSCC beams. In addition, the dominant failure mode of the specimens was determined as tensile cracks according to the rising angle-average frequency (RA-AF) criterion for potential FLSCC application in terms of the limiting ratios. This failure mode indicates that under pure bending loads, the mid-span section is subjected to the maximum bending moment, and the specimen experiences tensile damage. Therefore, for future practical application, the structural health state of FLSCC in CRTS-III could be nondestructively real-time monitored by the AE technique. Meanwhile, the calculated fracture parameters of the FLSCC specimen can reflect the cracks stability of the specimen. This study can also present experimental and theoretical references for further studies on FLSCC in CRTS-Ⅲ under other types of loads.

Development of A More State-led Approach of Chinese Railway Express During and After the Epidemic

Starting from the decentralization during the reform and opening-up period in 1978, the growth of China's railroad has gone through the process of decentralization and then re-centralization, which is also one of the most special stages. The development process of CR Express is a epitome of the history of China's railroad development. Since its opening in 2011, its transportation volume has been showing a trend of steady growth. Since the epidemic, the China-Europe liner has ushered in a period of extremely rapid development. The fundamental reason for this is that the unexpected demand under the ad hoc situation has shaped the decentralized policy into a more state-led approach to developing the freight train operation. This paper will focus on this phenomenon, analyze the reasons for this trend from various aspects such as politics, economy, international situation, etc., and elaborate the challenges faced by the CR Express in the post epidemic era as well as the implications of this development process for China's infrastructure construction.

Research on crack propagation of CRTS III track slabs under train load

Microcracks may occur in Chinese Railway Track System type III (CRTS III) ballastless track slabs during service, and it is necessary to investigate their potential propagation under train load, which could lead to slab deterioration and affect the durability of the track structure. In this paper, based on the fracture mechanics theory, the stress intensity factors (SIFs) at the tips of transverse crack, longitudinal crack and vertical crack on the CRTS III track slabs under train load are solved by the extended finite element method (XFEM) in Abaqus software. The changes of SIFs at the crack tips during the passage of the train are analyzed, and the effects of the crack length and depth on the SIFs of the three types of cracks are discussed under train load. Crack growth rate is calculated using Paris' semi-empirical law to estimate slab life. The results show that the train load contributes to the propagation of transverse and vertical cracks in the vertical direction and inhibits the longitudinal cracks. When the middle of the sixth vehicle is above the crack, the SIFs at the tips of the crack reach their maximum values. The SIF of vertical cracks exceeds the fracture toughness at a certain depth. The fatigue load cycles calculated by Paris' semi-empirical law suggest that maintenance will not be required due to insufficient propagation under train load during service.

Fault Diagnosis of a Switch Machine to Prevent High-Speed Railway Accidents Combining Bi-Directional Long Short-Term Memory with the Multiple Learning Classification Based on Associations Model

The fault diagnosis of a switch machine is vital for high-speed railway operations because switch machines play an important role in the safe operation of high-speed railways, which often have faults because of their complicated working conditions. To improve the accuracy of turnout fault diagnosis for high-speed railways and prevent accidents from occurring, a combination of bi-directional long short-term memory (BiLSTM) with the multiple learning classification based on associations (MLCBA) model using the operation and maintenance text data of switch machines is proposed in this research. Due to the small probability of faults for a switch machine, it is difficult to form a diagnosis with the small amount of sample data, and more fault text features can be extracted with feedforward in a BiLSTM model. Then, the high-quality rules of the text data can be acquired by replacing the SoftMax classification with MLCBA in the output of the BiLSTM model. In this way, the identification of switch machine faults in a high-speed railway can be realized, and the experimental results show that the Accuracy and Recall of the fault diagnosis can reach 95.66% and 96.29%, respectively, as shown in the analysis of the ZYJ7 turnout fault text data of a Chinese railway bureau from five recent years. Therefore, the combined BiLSTM and MLCBA model can not only realize the accurate diagnosis of small-probability turnout faults but can also prevent high-speed railway accidents from occurring and ensure the safe operation of high-speed railways.

„Pamiętnik Harbiński” (1923-1924) – periodyk kolonii polskiej w Harbinie (Chiny)

The article is a presentation of the periodical “Pamiętnik Harbiński” [“The Harbin Diary”], which was published in the town of Harbin in China, in the years 1923–1924. There was quite a big Polish colony, connected with eastern Chinese railway built by Russia. Its administrative center was located in the place that soon developed into an economically thriving town called Harbin, established in 1898. Fair working conditions attracted many engineers, white collar and blue collar workers, including great numbers of Poles. Their growing educational and cultural needs brought fruit in the formation of Polish organizations and associations, as well as in the development of publishing market. One of the 25 identified Polish periodical titles that were published in Harbin from the beginnings of press publishing movement in 1917 to the eradication of Polish Diaspora in 1949 was “Pamiętnik Harbiński” which, due to its characteristic profile, deserves to be analyzed in a much greater detail.

Restructuring Chinese railways from a cost-efficient perspective—A hedonic cost function analysis

Restructuring Chinese railways from a cost-efficient perspective—A hedonic cost function analysis

Is the safety index of modern safety integrity level(SIL) truly appropriate for the railway?

Safety is paramount in rail transportation. The International Safety Standard IEC 61508, issued by the International Electrotechnical Commission (IEC) in 2000, describes the modern concept of safety and the specifications for safety evaluation in a systematic manner. On this basis, the EN 50129 railway transportation safety standard and safety integrity level(SIL) are established. Through the above analysis, the relationship between safety-related system reliability, acceptable risk, and safety index is summarized. It is clear that the safety index is based on acceptable risks. Nonetheless, as the economy and society advance, the safety index mandated by the SIL falls behind. Consequently, the principles and methodologies for calculating the safety index are presented. The paper proposes a reference for the Chinese railway safety index based on actual data from the Chinese railways over the past few years.

Region‐centric infrastructure policies and the regional politics surrounding Chinese railway projects: Insights from the East Africa region

AbstractThe African Union and regional economic communities have identified infrastructure development, not least the enhancement of railway systems, as a key priority to advance regional and continental integration policy. The keen interest of Chinese actors in Africa's railway sector is largely welcomed as conducive to increasing infrastructural connectivity within and between Africa's sub‐regions. This article argues that regional railway projects must be assessed against regional political contexts, which crucially co‐determine the degree of coordination and cooperation in the context of region‐centric infrastructure policies. Competing national political agendas, exacerbated mostly by China's bilateral engagement with East African Community member states, has intensified East Africa's infrastructure race. This has resulted in a poorly coordinated standard‐gauge railway project along the East African Northern Corridor; consequently, its economic viability is in doubt.Related ArticlesIkeanyibe, Okechukwu Marcellus. 2018. “Bureaucratic Politics and the Implementation of Liberalization Reforms in Nigeria: A Study of the Unbundling and Reorganization of the Nigerian National Petroleum Corporation.” Politics & Policy 46(2): 263–94. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12249.Iwuoha, Victor Chidubem, Nneka Ifeoma Okafor, and Emmanuel Ifeadike. 2022. “State Regulation of Nigeria's Maritime Ports: Exploring the Impact of Port Concession on Both the Regulator and the Operators.” Politics & Policy 50(5): 1032–52. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12495.McNamara, Madeleine W., John C. Morris, and Martin Mayer. 2014. “Expanding the Universe of Multi‐Organizational Arrangements: Contingent Coordination and the Deepwater Horizon Transportation Challenges.” Politics & Policy 42(3): 346–68. https://doi.org/10.1111/polp.12073.

Railway Freight Demand Forecasting Based on Multiple Factors: Grey Relational Analysis and Deep Autoencoder Neural Networks

The construction of high-speed rail lines in China has drastically improved the freight capacity of conventional railways. However, due to recent national energy policy adjustments, rail freight volumes, consisting mostly of coal, ore, and other minerals, have declined. As a result, the corresponding changes in the supply and demand of goods and transportation have led to a gradual transformation of the railway freight market from a seller’s market to a buyer’s market. It is important to carry out a systematic analysis and a precise forecast of the demand for rail freight transport. However, traditional time series forecasting models often lack precision during drastic fluctuations in demand, while deep learning-based forecasting models may lack interpretability. This study combines grey relational analysis (GRA) and deep neural networks (DNN) to offer a more interpretable approach to predicting rail freight demand. GRA is used to obtain explanatory variables associated with railway freight demand, which improves the intelligibility of the DNN prediction. However, the high-dimension predictor variable can make training on DNN challenging. Inspired by deep autoencoders (DAE), we add a layer of an encoder to the GRA-DNN model to compress and aggregate the high-dimension input. Case studies conducted on Chinese railway freight from 2000 to 2018 show that the proven GRA-DAE-NN model is precise and easy to interpret. Comparative experiments with conventional prediction models ARIMA, SVR, FC-LSTM, DNN, FNN, and GRNN further validate the performance of the GRA-DAE-NN model. The prediction accuracy of the GRA-DAE-NN model is 97.79%, higher than that of other models. Among the main explanatory variables, coal, oil, grain production, railway locomotives, and vehicles have a significant impact on the railway freight demand trend. The ablation experiment verified that GRA has a significant effect on the selection of explanatory variables and on improving the accuracy of predictions. The method proposed in this study not only accurately predicts railway freight demand but also helps railway transportation companies to better understand the key factors influencing demand changes.

The effects of loading rates on the fracture characteristics at the bonding interface between steam concrete and self-compacting concrete using three-point bending test

The properties of bonding interface of Chinese Railway Track System III (CRTS III) slab ballastless track structure is important for the stability of operation, however, little is known about the interface fracture behaviors of CRTS III slab ballastless track structure. In this work, the three-point bending test under different loading rates was conducted on concrete specimens with a bonding interface between steam concrete (SC) and self-compacting concrete (SCC). The influences of loading rate on the fracture parameters and characteristics were investigated. The experimental results indicate that the failure patterns of concrete with bonding interface changed from debonding failure to spalling failure as the loading rate increased. The P-CMOD curve of concrete with a bonding interface demonstrated a similar pattern under different loading rates, which mainly included three stages: linear growth stage, crack development stage and failure destruction stage. The fracture parameters exhibited an obvious loading rate effect: the higher the loading rate, the higher the fracture energy, as well as the critical relative effective crack length, fracture toughness, and the deformation resistance of the bonding interface. It also revealed that more tortuous main crack and multiple crack paths could be observed with the increase in loading rate. A higher loading rate can promote the conversion of fracture process zone to macroscopic crack zone and also increase the fracture energy in the bonding interface.

Fastener partial looseness identification of the ballastless track by a time-domain Bayesian approach

The fastener system is an important component of the ballastless track, and the fastener looseness threatens the safety of the railway track. This paper proposes a Bayesian model updating method integrated with a Python–Abaqus interface framework to identify the fastener partial looseness of the ballastless track via vibration data. By following the technical standards of Chinese Railway Industry, a laboratory scaled ballastless track model was constructed for the demonstration and verification of the proposed methodology. Not only the damage location can be accurately identified, but also the damage severity can be evaluated. In addition, the associated posterior uncertainties of the identified results can be quantified by calculating the posterior probability density functions of all uncertain model parameters, which can provide valuable information to engineers for ballastless track system damage detection.

The influence of perceived Human Resource strength on safety performance among high-speed railway drivers: The role of organizational identification and psychological capital

Introduction: Under the Chinese railway system reform background, high-speed railway drivers face continuous organizational change. As a communication channel between organizations and employees, the implementation of Human Resource Management (HRM) requires urgent attention. The present study explored the impacts of perceived Human Resource (HR) strength on safety outcomes premised on social identity theory. The relationships among perceived HR strength, organizational identification, psychological capital, and safety performance were investigated. Method: This study gathered 470 sets of paired data from Chinese high-speed railway drivers and their direct supervisors. Results: The results indicated that perceived HR strength positively affects safety performance via organizational identification, directly and indirectly. The findings also revealed that psychological capital promotes the direct effect of perceived HR strength on drivers’ safety performance. Practical Applications: Railway organizations were suggested to not only focus on the HR content but also consider the HR process, especially in an organizational change context.

Temperature field simulation and microstructure evolution of Fe-based coating processed by extreme high-speed laser cladding for re-manufacturing locomotive axle

With the rapid development of Chinese railway network in the last decade, the number of scrapped locomotive axles is increasing year by year due to various damages. Re-manufacturing is an effective way to save resources and reduce carbon footprint for developing an environmental-friendly society. In the present work, Fe-based alloy powder was deposited on the surface of a 25CrMo4 steel using extreme high-speed laser cladding (EHLA). The optimum processing parameters were determined through range analysis, and the thermal effect to the substrate was studied by numerical simulation. The depth of heated-affected zone (HAZ) was obtained by both experimental method and numerical simulation approach, and the results showed good agreement. The microstructure evolution, phase composition, and mechanical properties of the cladding layer were investigated systematically. The cladding layer was mainly consisted of austenite, ferrite, and carbides. The microstructure evolution exhibited a gradient variation from the interface to the top of cladding layer, which was similar to conventional laser cladding (CLA). Furthermore, the quenching effect to the substrate changed the microstructure from sorbite to martensite, leading to the formation of hardening layer beneath the cladding layer. The cladded sample exhibited higher tensile strength but lower elongation compared with 25CrMo4 substrate, which was detrimental to the service life of locomotive axles.