Railway Infrastructure Systems Research Articles

Indian railway infrastructure systems: global comparison, challenges and opportunities

Railways are the most important development from the point of view of the infrastructure in India from 1850 to recent times. Indian railways are the only reliable and feasible means on land for transportation of goods and materials. The Indian Railways network has integrated markets and people across the length and breadth of this huge country. The Indian railway is the fourth largest railway in the world. In the present scenario, Indian Railways has become the leading powerhouse of the Indian economy, which is reflected in the gross domestic product in the latest budget for 2020. According to Vision 2020, a significant focus of railways would be on track enhancement, environmental sustainability, network expansion of railways, capacity creation, train safety, reducing carbon dioxide footprint, high-speed train introduction and technological excellence. This research paper provides a comprehensive resource for those involved in research and reforms related to the modernisation, digitalisation and efficiency of Indian Railways. It focuses on analysis of key factors such as population and total area of a country, electrification of rails and railway expansion that show the importance of railways and helps identify potential fields that need to be addressed in Indian Railways owing to the need of the market and modernisation.

A Conceptual Model-based Digital Twin Platform for Holistic Large-scale Railway Infrastructure Systems

Railway is crucial for a sustainable transportation system. Digitization of the railway infrastructure system has a proven impact on improving its resilience and efficiency while reducing the overall cost. The increased digitization of railway infrastructure systems provides a solid basis for the realization of a digital twin (DT), which can continuously merge different sources of data and diverse models for monitoring, diagnostics, and prognostics to optimize railway performance. However, the railway infrastructure system is sophisticated and consists of a series of subsystems, including turnouts, tunnels, vehicles, etc. Current researches mainly focus on the DT application of the single subsystem, but the comprehensive communication and interactions between diverse railway infrastructure subsystems remain a largely under-explored domain. Aiming to fill the gap, this research introduces a conceptual architecture to develop a DT platform to seamlessly integrate and automatically link digital models and data of different subsystems into a holistic large-scale railway infrastructure system. The model cooperation frameworks, communication approaches and visualization toolbox are presented in this work. One typical use case of the platform will also be implemented and discussed. ft is expected that this research will shed new light on the sustainable development of the holistic large-scale railway infrastructure system.

State-of-the-Art Review on Additive Manufacturing Technology in Railway Infrastructure Systems

Additive manufacturing technologies, well known as three-dimensional printing (3DP) technologies, have been applied in many industrial fields, including aerospace, automobiles, shipbuilding, civil engineering and nuclear power. However, despite the high material utilization and the ability to rapidly construct complex shaped structures of 3D printing technologies, the application of additive manufacturing technologies in railway track infrastructure is still at the exploratory stage. This paper reviews the state-of-the-art research of additive manufacturing technologies related the railway track infrastructure and discusses the challenges and prospects of 3D printing technology in this area. The insights will not only help the development of 3D printing technologies into railway engineering but also enable smarter railway track component design and improve track performance and inspection strategies.

Data-driven damage identification technique for steel truss railroad bridges utilizing principal component analysis of strain response

Railway bridges are a critical part of the railway infrastructure system and the majority of these bridges are approaching their expected design lifespan. These bridges need to be maintained effectively. This article proposes a damage detection framework for truss railway bridges based on operational strain responses. The method relies on principal component analysis (PCA) of strain responses of the truss bridge. Strain time-history responses under baseline and damaged bridge conditions are used to compute the principal components which are then ranked based on their corresponding eigenvectors. The results are demonstrated in terms of damage indicators which is obtained by comparing the geometric distance of coordinates of the principal component space between the baseline and damaged bridge condition. The method is numerically verified through a finite element model of a truss railroad bridge with added artificial noise. It is shown that the proposed method could identify, locate and relatively assess the severity of the damage induced by stiffness change (at least 20% to as low as 10%, depending on operational variability and measurement noise level) in instrumented truss elements. This method can be useful in assisting the existing bridge maintenance techniques and formulating an effective structural health monitoring framework.

Cluster analysis on railway infrastructure standards in China and its application to railway efficiency improvement

The present paper structures an infrastructure standard cluster by studying the attributes, the level of application, and the implementation object of more than two hundred railway infrastructure standards in China. These standards are classified and fitted into different specific categories of the cluster, as a result, a systematic and complete standard cluster forms. A concept of comprehensive standards is put forward during the development of the proposed standard cluster. The proposed cluster could not only guide the preparation of railway standards, improve the economic performance of railway construction, but also helps to enhance the efficiency of the whole railway technical system. Cost reduction for HSR is chosen as an efficiency improvement objective to study how the proposed standard cluster helps to get a set of complete technical solutions. Study results reveal that the cluster can provide a basis for a comprehensive study on specific technical aspects (e.g., cost reduction), and can further extend to a number of applications regarding to efficiency improvement of the railway infrastructure system.

A MODELLING FRAMEWORK FOR RAILWAY INFRASTRUCTURE RELIABILITY ANALYSIS

The maintenance and management of railway infrastructure plays a central role in ensuring the reliability and availability of rail transport. In a highly competitive transport market, the rail industry is required to employ new and innovative maintenance strategies that will position rail transport as an affordable and reliable transportation alternative. This can be realised through implementing maintenance strategies that prioritise efficient resource allocation. Application of reliability-based techniques to make informed decisions in maintenance management, with an overall aim of reducing operational expenditure while maintaining safety and efficiency, has been increasing. This paper presents a framework for the application of a reliability-based technique to evaluate the reliability of railway infrastructure systems.

Reply to Giannakos, K. Comment on: Toughness of Railroad Concrete Crossties with Holes and Web Openings. Infrastructures 2017, 2, 3

This paper responds to the discussion [1] by Dr. K. Giannakos over our technical note [2].[...]

철도 인프라 적용 교량형 조립식 모듈의 경량화 설계

This paper describes a method to design a lightweight modular bridge for a railway infrastructure system. A lightweight design was achieved using the material selection method. Aluminum extrusions and honeycomb sandwich composites were selected as the best materials to reduce the weight of the upper structure of a conventional modular bridge made of carbon-steel material. The structural integrity of the lightweight modular bridge was evaluated under vertical and wind loads. The twisting and bending natural frequencies were also evaluated to investigate its dynamic characteristics. The results showed that the structural integrity and natural frequencies of the lightweight modular bridge, made of aluminum extrusion and sandwich composites, satisfied the design requirements. Moreover, it was found that the weight of the conventional modular bridge made of carbon steel could be reduced by a maximum of 47% using lightweight materials.

Heat-Related Failures on Southeast England’s Railway Network: Insights and Implications for Heat Risk Management

Abstract High temperatures and heat waves can cause numerous problems for railway infrastructure, such as track buckling, sagging of overhead lines, and the failure of electrical equipment. Without adaptation, these problems are set to increase in a future warmer climate. This study used industry fault data to examine the temporal and spatial distribution of heat-related incidents in southeast England and produce a unique evidence base of the impact of temperature on the rail network. In particular, the analysis explored the concept of failure harvesting, whereby the infrastructure system becomes increasingly resilient to temperature over the course of the summer season (April–September) as the most vulnerable assets fail with each incremental rise in temperature. The analysis supports the hypothesis and clearly shows that a greater number of heat-related incidents occur in the early/midsummer season before reducing significantly, despite equivalently high temperatures. This failure harvesting and the consequential increased resilience of the railway infrastructure system over the course of the summer season could permit an innovative and dynamic new approach to heat risk management on the railway network. New approaches that would reduce the disruption and delays and improve service are explored here.

Optimizing dynamic investment decisions for railway systems protection

Past and recent events have shown that railway infrastructure systems are particularly vulnerable to natural catastrophes, unintentional accidents and terrorist attacks. Protection investments are instrumental in reducing economic losses and preserving public safety. A systematic approach to plan security investments is paramount to guarantee that limited protection resources are utilized in the most efficient manner. In this paper, we present an optimization model to identify the railway assets which should be protected to minimize the impact of worst case disruptions on passenger flows. We consider a dynamic investment problem where protection resources become available over a planning horizon. The problem is formulated as a bilevel mixed-integer model and solved using two different decomposition approaches. Random instances of different sizes are generated to compare the solution algorithms. The model is then tested on the Kent railway network to demonstrate how the results can be used to support efficient protection decisions.

Strategic framework to achieve carbon-efficient construction and maintenance of railway infrastructure systems

Sakdirat Kaewunruen*, Joseph M. Sussman and Herbert H. Einstein 1 Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education, School of Civil Engineering, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, UK 2 High Speed Rail Research Group, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA 3 Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, USA *Correspondence: sakdirat@hotmail.com; s.kaewunruen@bham.ac.uk

Analysis of Criminal and Terrorist Related Episodes in Railway Infrastructure Scenarios

Prevention and preparedness of risks in railway transportation systems is crucial for homeland security and require, among other things, a proper analysis of the vulnerabilities of the assets, a clear awareness of criticalities, possible countermeasures and adequate methods to design, scale and optimize the protection. To this end, in this paper we present an analysis of various security incidents and terrorist attacks that took place from 1972 to 2011; all involving railway infrastructures. All of the collected information has been stored in a database, aptly named RISTAD (Railway Infrastructure Systems Terrorist Attacks Database). Specifically, this research focuses on railway assets in order to identify those environmental, architectonic and infrastructural aspects that make such targets more “attractive” from a criminal point of view. We analyzed about 540 criminal-related episodes utilizing open source documents in an effort to correlate the acts with the peculiar characteristics of the asset. The last section is specifically focused on stations, attempting to emphasize both interesting and, for some aspects, non-intuitive correlation among collected data (e.g., lethality and number of attacks as a function of the number of tracks, the number of daily passengers, station extension, presence and type of security systems, etc.).

Pkp2 programme project: assessment of steel railway bridges condition and review of methodologies for assessment of remaining lifetime

The issues of Slovenian railway infrastructure system are discussed. We focused on analyzing steel railway bridges and evaluation of their life expectancy. We gathered the input data from the company Slovenske železnice d.o.o. They include data like geometry and annual traffic loads. Latter we used in computational analysis. In evaluation of life expectancy of steel railway bridges, the fatigue of construction material has crucial affect. It is connected with loads cycles. We established web data base, where basic bridge data, photographs, loc

Overall railway infrastructure effectiveness (ORIE)

PurposeThe main purpose of this paper is to develop an approach to analyzing the factors influencing the performance of railway infrastructure, to propose an approach to measuring the overall railway infrastructure effectiveness (ORIE), and to test these approaches in a case study to verify their effectiveness.Design/methodology/approachThe methodology adopted here was to develop a concept for measurement of the overall effectiveness of a railway infrastructure similar to that for measurement of the OEE. The concept thus developed was applied on Swedish railway track sections for collecting data and for their ORIE validation, as a case study.FindingsThe findings of the ORIE case study show that the model can be used for other sections of the Swedish railways. It can also be applied to other railways with some modifications.Practical implicationsORIE can measure the extent to which the railway infrastructure system manages to deliver its agreed performance to the traffic operators. Infrastructure managers can also use the ORIE as a key performance indicator, which can provide important input for effective decision making.Originality/valueThe paper presents a structured way of developing a conceptual ORIE model applied to the railway‐sector. This model can be used by other railways with suitable modifications.