Railway Industry Research Articles

Flame Resistance Performance of Silicone Pad for Application in Railway Industry

Flame Resistance Performance of Silicone Pad for Application in Railway Industry

Smart adaptive technologies for intelligent transportation systems (ITS): efficient design through BIM integration

PurposeWhile efficient design in engineering projects is crucial, this paper aims to examine the integration of Building Information Modeling (BIM) into railway Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS). The paper provides some key understanding of integrating BIM and ITS to improve the efficiency of railway infrastructure projects.Design/methodology/approachAn in-depth qualitative analysis of three ITS case studies was conducted to understand BIM’s global impact and benefits in railway infrastructure projects. While case study one investigated the Crossrail (UK), the other two case studies were TUC Rail (Belgium) and the Intercity railway network (Norway).FindingsThe findings include the specific benefits of BIM, regarding the railway infrastructure. The result indicated that BIM benefits were consistently the same across all case studies. Although Case study 1 was the only one that boasts a high reduction in waste and reworks, all of the case studies showed less rework and delays due to BIM. The results indicated that the advantages of BIM for such projects are cost optimization, reduction in waste, rework and lessening delays. Subsequently, this leads to the ease and efficiency with which structures and railways can be built. The outcomes can ultimately assist transportation planners in better planning and managing railway projects.Practical implicationsThis study proposes the integration of BIM into railway projects as a part of their ITS. The BIM integration into railway projects as a part of their ITS fits within the overall planning to handover phases. Specifically, the BIM integration improves the design process of typical railway projects. Thus, the most significant advantage of BIM for railway projects is to further improve their design process leading to a higher degree of constructability.Originality/valueRailway infrastructure performs a major role in economic and regional development. The complexity of railway projects continues to increase as the need for more railway infrastructure is on the rise globally. BIM is proving to be an effective tool for improving the efficiency of railway infrastructure projects. As the utilization of BIM is intensifying, the railway industry can further exploit BIM to improve project delivery adeptness by offering greater collaboration leading to efficient design processes. As a result, the understanding of BIM for horizontal projects such as railway infrastructure on a global scale is a substantial exercise that this research aims to respond to.

Musculoskeletal symptom survey and ergonomic assessments associated with maintenance tasks in the Indonesian railway industry

Introduction: Suboptimal work design of maintenance tasks in railway industries often leads to adverse health effects for workers. This study aimed to determine the ergonomic risk levels and assess the extent of musculoskeletal symptoms associated with train maintenance tasks in the Indonesian railway industry. Methods: The study involved 34 workers responsible for the daily handling of locomotive components within a railway maintenance workshop in Indonesia. A musculoskeletal symptom survey was conducted using the Indonesian version of the Nordic Musculoskeletal Questionnaire to determine the prevalence and severity of such adverse health effects. Ergonomics assessments were conducted using the Rapid Entire Body Assessment (REBA) to evaluate the risk level and contributing risk factors associated with the investigated maintained tasks. Results: Participants predominantly experienced musculoskeletal symptoms in the lower back (100%), followed by shoulders (91%), and knees (88%), while the highest severity was also observed in these regions. The ergonomics assessments revealed that over 50% of the maintenance tasks were categorized as either high or very high risk, with higher REBA section scores noted in the neck, leg, and trunk compared to those of the lower arm, wrist, and upper arm. Conclusion: Workers performing train maintenance tasks experience a high prevalence and moderate severity of musculoskeletal symptoms. Additionally, most maintenance tasks performed were considered risky. Prompt interventions are necessary to address these findings.

DECISION-MAKING SUPPORT TECHNOLOGIES IN THE FORMATION OF QUALITY MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS AT VEHICLE REPAIR ENTERPRISES

In recent years, the strategy of creating a safely functioning and efficient transport complex of Ukraine integrated into the world transport network has been fixed. Therefore, the creation of a progressive system of product quality management in the conditions of car repair enterprises is considered an urgent scientific and technical task. The quality management system is a management subsystem of an industrial enterprise. Modern production systems are based on TQM principles and widely use ISO 9001 certification. At the same time, certification is based on independent third-party audits (a conformity assessment organization). The wide spread of the standard is based on the fact that it contains generalized requirements (principles) for the organization of product quality control, which can be used at enterprises that differ significantly both in terms of specialization and the scale of production (depots or car repair plants). But this is the «bottleneck» of the standard – the lack of consideration of specialized production conditions makes it impossible to compensate for critical factors affecting the final quality of products. Currently, the accepted approaches to quality assessment do not fully take into account the factors that affect the final quality of products. In order to put all market participants - railway operators, manufacturers, rolling stock repairers and suppliers in mutually beneficial conditions, a single International Railway Industry Standard ISO / TS 22163 International Railway Industry Standart (IRIS) was developed.For the effective use of tools for ensuring the quality of rail car repair, it is considered necessary to use modern management decision support systems. They will allow real-time monitoring of production processes. It is possible to use the method of fuzzy sets to improve the quality management systems of wagon repairs based on the development of separate control algorithms with decision tables. In order to meet the requirements of international quality standards, it is necessary to significantly modernize management approaches based on the creation of progressive decision support systems.

Research on safety design for automatic level crossing warning system applying advanced technology

A level crossing is an intersection where a railway line crosses a road, most railway traffic accidents happen here, therefore, traffic safety requirements on the level crossing are always a concern of the railway industry in every country in the world. The automatic level crossing warning system is one of the most common structures, the technical solutions applied to this system are also diverse and have certain advantages and disadvantages. The application of new scientific and technological achievements to monitoring and controlling systems in the railway industry plays a very important role, but the required level of safety for such systems is very demanding, so the problem of this topic is always interesting in research. This paper presents a solution to design and test an automatic cross-road warning system applying advanced technology according to safety architecture, to reduce the cost of construction and maintenance of the system, contributing to ensuring safe traffic, convenience in management, and improving the throughput capacity of the railway industry.

Railway Infrastructure Cybersecurity: An Overview

The railway infrastructure constitutes a type of operational technology (OT)-based critical infrastructure, which is expected to work 24x7, 365 days a year, and where the life expectancy of operational equipment often exceeds 30 years. In this domain, an operational anomaly compromising the OT system can cause a train accident or interrupt traffic, with potentially significant impact in terms of business as well as for passenger safety. Due to their relevance, railways are strategic assets of national interest and, consequently, targets of interest for cybercriminals and cyberwarfare activities. For instance, service interruptions may trigger ripple effects resulting in product shortages and widespread supply chain disruptions, with severe impacts for both the economy and national security. In a bid to optimise and streamline operations. the railway industry has recently started taking a series of significant steps towards digitization, with infrastructures experiencing a significant paradigm shift which, for instance, makes it possible to have centralised interlockings and Radio Block Centre (RBC) for an entire country, with geographical redundancy, ensuring the utmost availability and punctuality by moving the control logic to the cloud. Nevertheless, these developments must always be carried on within the scope of established cybersecurity standards and frameworks. This paper presents an analysis of the state of the art on railway cybersecurity, focused on the existing solutions based on the application of the CENELEC “Technical specification 50701 - Railway Application – Cybersecurity”, which is currently the latest European specification addressing railways, being designed to help suppliers, integrators, and operators to implement a cybersecurity risk assessment plan, the necessary controls, and the management of the complete system life cycle. Special attention will be paid to the conduit between the rail signal interlocking system, that controls the line signalling, and the Automatic Train Supervision (ATS) that runs in the Operational Control Centre (OCC), as this has been identified by the European Union Agency for Cybersecurity (ENISA) as one of the most critical systems identified by the operators of essential services.

The power of mentoring: developing professional skills in the railway industry

The article discusses the issues of organizing and conducting mentoring during production and pre-diploma internships at real workplaces of railway transport enterprises for students of secondary vocational education in the railway industry. The objectives of implementing a targeted mentoring model in an educational institution have been studied.A study was conducted of the formation of general and professional competencies, knowledge, skills, practical experience, safe, effective and modern methods and techniques for carrying out work among students of secondary vocational education in the railway industry during production and pre-graduation internships, including in student construction teams, while introducing a quality system mentoring, with official employment of students at real production facilities in the railway industry.Particular attention is paid to the development of a mentoring system in railway transport and strengthening the connection between educational institutions of secondary vocational education and real enterprises of the railway industry in order to guarantee the effective training of highly qualified personnel.

Monitoring the bogie lateral dynamics of a high-speed train through wireless sensor nodes

The condition monitoring of railway vehicles and of the infrastructure (track and overhead equipment) through the use of vehicle-based sensors is becoming a major trend for the railway industry and, to this aim, new rolling stock generations are often natively fitted with numerous sensors. However, older vehicles are not equipped with sensors and monitoring systems so that, considering the long service life of the rolling stock, advanced monitoring and condition-based maintenance techniques can only be applied to a relatively minor portion of the in-service railway fleets. This paper presents results from a research programme aimed at designing and testing an innovative monitoring system based on wireless sensor nodes, suitable for the retrofitting of older rolling stock generations, not natively equipped with advanced sensing and monitoring capabilities. The prototype monitoring system was used to detect the incipient bogie instability, which can be related to degradation in some suspension components or to increase of the equivalent conicity at wheel/rail contact. Different vehicle conditions and the influence of the track were considered in the study. Experimental tests have shown that is possible to identify not only how the vehicle condition is evolving in time but also the effect that maintenance operations like wheel reprofiling may have on the bogie lateral dynamics.

Modelling a DC Electric Railway System and Determining the Optimal Location of Wayside Energy Storage Systems for Enhancing Energy Efficiency and Energy Management

Global demand for fossil fuels is highly increasing, necessitating energy efficiency to be enhanced in transitioning to low-carbon energy systems. Electric railways are highly efficient in reducing the transportation demand for fossil fuels as they are lightweight and their energy demand can be fed by renewable energy resources. Further, the regenerative braking energy of decelerating trains can be fed to accelerating trains and stored in onboard energy storage systems (ESSs) and stationary ESSs. It is fundamental to model electric railways accurately before investigating approaches to enhancing their energy efficiency. However, electric railways are challenging to model as they are nonlinear, resulting from the rectifier substations, overvoltage protection circuits, and the unpredictability and uncertainty of the load according to the train position. There have been few studies that have examined the ESS location’s impact on improving the energy efficiency of electric railways while using specialised simulation tools in electric railways. However, no single study exists that has studied the location impact of stationary ESSs on the energy efficiency of electric railways while the trains are supported by onboard ESSs. Given these goals and challenges, the main objective of this work is to develop a model using commercial software used by industry practitioners. Further, the energy saving is aimed to be maximised using stationary ESSs installed in optimal locations while trains are supported by onboard ESSs. The model includes trains, onboard ESSs, rail tracks, passenger stations, stationary ESSs, and traction power systems involving power lines, connectors, switches, sectioning, and isolators. In this article, a test scenario is presented comprising two trains running on a 20 km with three passenger stations and two substations. The trains and track are modelled in OpenTrack simulation software (Version 1.9) while the power system is modelled in OpenPowerNet simulation software (Version 1.11). The two simulation tools are used in the railway industry and can produce realistic results by taking into account the entire electrical network structure. A stationary ESS is added on the wayside and moved in steps of 1 km to obtain the optimal location before investigating the impact of stationary ESSs on the performance and energy management of onboard ESSs. It is found that the energy saving when installing a stationary ESS at the optimal location is 56.05%, the peak-power reduction of Substation 1 is 4.37%, and the peak-power reduction of Substation 2 is 18.67%.

Analyzing the impact of opportunistic maintenance optimization on manufacturing industries in Bangladesh: An empirical study

The study investigates the impact of opportunistic maintenance (OM) optimization on manufacturing industries, especially in Bangladesh, to reduce maintenance costs. To that end, OM strategies have been proposed and optimized for multi-unit manufacturing systems, whereas most of the existing research is for single- or two-unit systems. OM strategies in this research cover one of the three policies: preventive replacement, preventive repair, and a two-level maintenance approach. The proposed two-level maintenance approach is a combination of lower-level maintenance, known as preventive repair, and higher-level maintenance, known as preventive replacement. Simulation optimization (SO) techniques using Python were utilized to evaluate the strategies. Historical data from two of Bangladesh's most promising and significant sectors, the footwear and railway industries, was used as the case study. Compared to the currently utilized corrective maintenance approach, the two-level maintenance approach is the most effective for both case studies, demonstrating cost savings of 16.9 % and 22.4 % for the footwear and railway industries, respectively. This study reveals that manufacturing industries can achieve significant cost savings by implementing the proposed OM strategies, a concept that has yet to be explored in developing countries like Bangladesh. However, the study considered the proposed approaches for major components of the system, and more significant benefits can be achieved if it is possible to apply them to all critical components of the system.

Corrugation and Squat Classification and Detection with VGG16 and YOLOv5 Neural Network Models

Railway track defects in Malaysia pose significant risks of train derailments and accidents, underscoring the urgency for early and accurate defect detection and classification. This study presents a novel approach utilizing deep learning models, VGG16 and YOLOv5, for detecting and classifying railway track defects, explicitly focusing on corrugation and squat defects. The research's uniqueness lies in its application of these specific models and the composition of a dataset collected from extensive field measurements and inspections across various railway tracks within the Track Network Maintenance Ampang Line in Malaysia. The results demonstrate that these models achieve high precision in defect classification and detection of defects by more than 80%. The proposed methodology provides the railway industry with a powerful tool to streamline maintenance planning and prioritize defect remediation efficiently. Early defect detection can prevent potential accidents and improve safety and operational efficiency. Future studies can expand on these findings by exploring the extension of the proposed techniques to address other types of rail defects. Incorporating a diverse range of scenarios and operating conditions in the dataset could further enhance the models' performance and generalization. Real-time deployment and integration with existing maintenance systems are crucial for practical adoption. This research has strengths but acknowledges limitations. Additional evaluation metrics and a diverse dataset are essential for model performance. Leveraging deep learning models offers a reliable solution for railway maintenance, enhancing safety and efficiency. Addressing these limitations will drive proactive defect management, ensuring safe and reliable railway networks.

The relationship between freight train length and the risk of derailment.

In recent years, longer and heavier trains have become more common, primarily driven by efficiency and cost-saving measures in the railroad industry. Regulation of train length is currently under consideration in the United States at both the federal and state levels, because of concerns that longer trains may have a higher risk of derailment, but the relationship between train length and risk of derailment is not yet well understood. In this study, we use data on freight train accidents during the 2013-2022 period from the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) Rail Equipment Accident and Highway-Rail Grade Crossing Accident databases to estimate the relationship between freight train length and the risk of derailment. We determine that longer trains do have a greater risk of derailment. Based on our analysis, running 100-car trains is associated with 1.11 (95% confidence interval: 1.10-1.12) times the derailment odds of running 50-car trains (or a 11% increase), even accounting for the fact that only half as many 100-car trains would need to run. For 200-car trains, the odds increase by 24% (odds ratio 1.24, 95% confidence interval: 1.20-1.28), again accounting for the need for fewer trains. Understanding derailment risk is an important component for evaluating the overall safety of the rail system and for the future development and regulation of freight rail transportation. Given the limitations of the current data on freight train length, this study provides an important step toward such an understanding.

The Impact of the High-speed Rail Industry and Its Possibility of Popularization-case of China

With the consensus and goals of reducing carbon emissions in various countries, energy transformation and sustainable development in various industry fields have attracted increasing attention, among which the transportation industry has great development potential. This article takes the case of the China high-speed rail industry's development to conduct research. Its advantages in using electricity as the main energy source have brought many positive impacts in China. China's case may be worthy of international popularization, thereby helping other regions achieve carbon emission reduction goals by combining various papers and data to examine the progress and effect of the high-speed railroad industry in China, as well as the main factors that had driven the improvement of the industry. Then analyze whether other regions could develop the industry from the potential condition to achieve the carbon emission goal, or even improve the regional economics. This study found that the early stages of industry construction were mainly promoted by policy promotion, and subsequent development relied on huge market demand to support development. The benefits of the high-speed rail industry are diverse, but it also involves certain risks, which reduces the possibility of its popularization.

Towards digital twin trains: implementing a cloud-based framework for railway vehicle dynamics simulation

ABSTRACT The digital twin technology holds great promise in driving the railway industry into a new era of digital intelligence. By creating a dynamic, personalized digital replica of a physical train, it has the potential to enable a range of advanced applications, including predictive maintenance, adaptive control, and early fault detection. However, substantial challenges exist that hinder the effective implementation of the digital twin concept for trains. To resolve this bottleneck issue, in this paper, these challenges are first identified and thoroughly examined, with a specific focus on those within the realm of railway vehicle dynamics simulation. A novel cloud-based simulation framework for the development of railway vehicle dynamics simulation software is then proposed to tackle the identified challenges. The framework makes use of cloud computing and cloud-based visualization technology to offer a scalable and flexible solution for railway vehicle dynamics simulation. Using the framework as its foundation, a cloud platform for constructing digital twin trains is also proposed and presented, with a detailed explanation of its architecture and functionalities. In addition, CTTSIM, a cloud computing-aided train-track system dynamics real-time simulation software, is developed as an illustrative application case of the proposed framework. An evaluation is undertaken to demonstrate the feasibility and utility of both CTTSIM and the proposed framework. This work provides a practical and effective solution for using vehicle dynamics simulation for constructing digital twin trains, representing a step towards the full implementation of the digital twin concept in the railway industry.

Competition and cooperation in international high-speed railway industry chain based on evolutionary game

ABSTRACT Due to the market demand, the development of the high-speed railway (HSR) is crucial. The purpose of this study is to analyze the competitive and cooperative behavior of enterprises in the international HSR industry chain. The evolutionary game model between upstream and downstream enterprises and the evolutionary game model between peer enterprises are constructed and solved. Then, the factors influencing strategy selection process and evolution direction are evaluated by numerical experiments. The findings reveal that various factors play role in relationships among HSR enterprises to evolve differently. For the upstream and downstream enterprises, critical factors such as the probability of winning the bid, construction costs, increased management costs, and transaction costs paid will influence the speed and direction of evolution. Whereas, for the peer enterprises, other factors, related to the winning probability of joint bidding, income distribution, cost distribution, and transaction costs will influence the speed and direction of evolution.

Enhanced Imaging Analysis of Aggregates for Road and Railway Applications

The South African pavement community has shown a keen interest in the use of imaging techniques to characterize the morphological characteristics of aggregates used in road and railway construction. This interest arises from the need to overcome the limitations of the traditional methods currently employed to quantify the shapes of these materials. Recent advancements and the use of enhanced aggregate imaging techniques for quantifying the shapes of crushed stone and ferro slag materials from 10 sources across the country are presented in this paper. A wide range of railway track ballast and road aggregates were selected from various quarries and sources across different provinces for this study. As part of this research, an improved protocol was developed to standardize imaging acquisition and ensure the repeatability of shape property measurements, thereby providing meaningful results and facilitating data analysis. The imaging analysis conducted in this study, which involved close to 2000 aggregate particles, revealed valuable insights into the angularity, surface texture, and flat and elongated ratio properties of coarse aggregates. Preliminary specification limits for these shape properties have been established. This contribution represents an initial step toward supporting the South African road and railway industry in adopting advanced techniques for the selection of aggregate materials.

Thermal characteristics of resistive heating composite panels for the interior parts of railway vehicles

The pandemic of highly infectious diseases like COVID-19 has highlighted the vulnerabilities of public transportation. In particular, railways are more vulnerable due to their dense environment, and the heating system used in winter is a major factor in increasing the transmission and risk of the virus. To improve the existing heating system, a study was conducted to develop a resistive heating composite capable of radiant heating. In this study, the applicability of heating elements, heating performance, and internal thermal deformation factors of laminated panels and sandwich panels used as rail vehicle components were analyzed in detail to consider the actual application of this technology in the railway industry. The experimental results confirmed that both types of panels effectively heated above the target temperature (120℃) in the heating element layer, demonstrating uniform heating characteristics. Additionally, sandwich panel is more affected by thermal deformation compared to the laminate panel. These experimental results are expected to serve as essential foundational data for the effective utilization, safety, and reliability considerations of resistive heating composite materials in real industrial environments.

Workshop dan Pelatihan Pembelajaran Berbasis Higher Order Thinking Skill (HOTS)

Madiun is a city in East Java Province, Indonesia. The fourth largest city in East Java, after Surabaya, Malang, and Kediri, is 160 km west of Surabaya, or 111 km east of Surakarta, Central Java. The fourth largest city in East Java after Surabaya, Malang and Kediri. This city has a railroad industry (INKA) and a railroad high school. Based on the data above, the social capital owned by the city of Madiun must be maintained and increased from time to time as the times change and progress. Therefore, society and the world. Education in Madiun must keep up with the times by updating or reforming, learning innovations to be at the forefront, and at least not to be left behind. Higher-order thinking, known as higher-order thinking skills (HOTS), is an educational reform concept based on learning taxonomies (such as Bloom's taxonomy). The idea is that some types of learning require more cognitive processing than others but have more general benefits. The problem is that the busyness of teachers and the community and the lack of time to think about and carry out updates make teachers less active in implementing innovations or reforms in education. To overcome this problem, it is necessary to provide education and training on various ways of updating learning. The implementation method is carried out through lectures, demonstrations, and workshops to school inspectors and school principals in Madiun. Evaluation of the pretest results regarding the HOTS workshop showed that understanding increased by 19% with indicators during the activity, 90% of the participants were enthusiastic about practicing it, and 100% had made updates by carrying out HOTS-based learning. This community service is one of the PGRI Madiun University programs that implement the Tri Dharma of Higher Education by conducting training on implementing HOTS-based learning.

Identification of optimal accelerometer placement on trains for railway switch wear monitoring via multibody simulation

Accelerometers play a crucial role in the railway industry, especially in track monitoring. Traditionally, they are placed on the railway tracks or often on bridges to monitor the health and condition of the infrastructure. Recently, there has been an increased focus on using regular trains to monitor the condition of railway infrastructure. Often, the sensors are placed based on certain assumptions without much scientific evidence or support. This paper utilizes the multibody simulation software GENSYS to identify the optimal placement of accelerometers on a passenger train for monitoring railway switch wear. Switch wear profiles were generated systematically and used as input for the simulations, studying acceleration at a total of 93 locations distributed among the wheelsets, bogies, and carbody. Based on both time and frequency domain analyses, optimal sensor locations were identified, generally close to the first bogie or wheelset at the leading carbody. Accelerations generated by the wheelset passing the switch can also be captured in the carbody, but it is important to note that these are several orders lower in magnitude compared to the acceleration on the wheelset. If accelerometers are to be placed in the carbody, correct sensitivity must be chosen, and a high-pass filter should be applied to capture the acceleration signals associated with switch wear. The study confirms that there is a direct correlation between the depth of switch wear and the magnitude of the acceleration. It remains effective even under various curve radii and train speeds.

Concept for an innovative screw coupling system production process

The article presents the concept of an innovative approach to the production of a screw coupling system, a key element in rail vehicles. The use of ready-made components from various subsuppliers, combined with new quality control methods, offers an opportunity for a significant reduction in cost and production time while increasing the efficiency and flexibility of the process. Key stages of the production process are highlighted, from the selection of semifinished products, through quality control, to the final assembly and validation. The applied strategies can minimise waste, increase material efficiency, and have a positive impact on the environment. This study constitutes a significant contribution to the development of sustainable production in the railway industry, with an emphasis on organisational, process, and product innovations.