Railway Vehicle and Track System Integration Project (TRAINS)

EPSRC Funding: £1,100,000

Abstract:

The privatisation of the UK’s main railway network has resulted in the separation of responsibilities for various technical aspects of the railway system. One major boundary that exists between the infrastructure and the vehicle operating companies is at the wheel/rail interface. The integrity of this interface is crucial to the safe and successful (in business terms) operation of the railway network as a whole. It has always been an area that has been subject to faults and failures, but recent experience has shown that these faults and failures are now on the increase and that action is needed to both understand and deal with the problem. TRAINS will investigate the means of reducing train derailments resulting from broken rails and other track and vehicle faults whilst simultaneously improving the economics of railway operation.

Wheel-rail interface problems will require solving as long as railways exist, and long after current problems with rolling contact fatigue have been solved. Many of these problems span several engineering disciplines and can only be effectively tackled by understanding the system as a whole, whereas the traditional approach has been to develop tools to analyse different parts of the system in isolation. The aim is to understand the interaction between the various components, dynamics, and design and maintenance factors which affect rails and rail vehicles. This entails integration of models and information across organisational and disciplinary boundaries, a problem facing many extended enterprises.

Account will need to be taken of the large numbers of stakeholders needs. The list of stakeholders, all having different objectives, is considerable, including infrastructure operators, vehicle operators, infrastructure maintenance companies, rolling stock companies, Her Majesty’s Railway Inspectorate, rail users, rail manufacturers, vehicle manufacturers, equipment suppliers, the Rail Regulator, and the Strategic Rail Authority.

The research will adopt a systems approach to describe the railway network and operators, the related stakeholders and their interests. The aim will be to understand and trace the interaction between the design, maintenance and operation of the vehicle and the effect on the track. The track will also be studied to define the effect on the vehicle of track condition. Predictive tools and deterioration models will be developed for the track and vehicle. Once a better understanding has been gained, the knowledge will be validated by laboratory testing and trials on site. A change development programme will be devised to enable existing systems to be modified and integrated to incorporate new knowledge, models and methods.

The research will develop and integrate the knowledge that has been gained in three research centres. The University of Birmingham has been studying the track and formation, Manchester Metropolitan University (MMU) has studied the vehicle and wheel/rail interface and Corus Steel has studied metallurgy and loading characteristics using modelling techniques. The project is supported by major partners in the rail industry including Railtrack, Corus, Alstom, GTRM, EWS, WS Atkins, Serco, Scott Wilson, London Underground, Balfour Beatty, ATOC and WRISA. Strategic management will be in the hands of an industry led steering group meeting quarterly and the many interdependent project stages will be submitted to an approval process based on industry-led review groups.

The resolution of this complex systems problem will have generic as well as particular application and to this end a generic systems model will be explored based on the output from the research.

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