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Organisationseinheit der BAM
Effective assessment and management of railway infrastructure for competitiveness and sustainability
(2018)
In this chapter the challenges facing railways have been illustrated through the description of two important events occurring in different geographical areas. While the explosion in Quebec, Canada, points out the importance of taking away the transportation infrastructure from highly populated areas; the disruption of the European railway network in Rastatt, Germany, describes the importance of designing alternative routes to critical railway segments, together with the need to have contingency plans to face extraordinary situations regarding the connectivity in a given transport network.
Future research efforts are recognized in relation with the railway car – track interaction, as the dynamic loads derived from such interaction could be reducing the life of such infrastructure. It is particularly important for infrastructures dedicated to the transportation of liquid hazardous substances.
The efficiency and safety of railway transportation depends on many factors and operating conditions, associated to the vehicle, the infrastructure, the operator and the environment. From the vehicle-infrastracture perspective, some influential factors include the dynamics of the vehicle and infrastructure interaction when the vehicle operates on curved tracks. Düring such changes of direction, the vehicle dynamically responds to the lateral perturbation, producing a lateral load transfer that represents an increase of the wheel forces on one side of the track, as a function of the train operating conditions and track design, including track's geometry and over-elevation, and vehicle's operating speed as well as its inertial properties and dimensions. In this context, the lateral load transfer superimposes to tangential steering forces, which are developed when the vehicle enters the curved track, and stabilize once a steady state is attained if the vehicle travels along a constant radius track at constant speed. The magnitude of such tangential forces depends on a variety of factors, including the yaw stiffness of the bogie, and the friction at the centre plate. While the friction at the
centre plate generates higher tangential forces on the track and a consequential greater rail wearing and lose of locomotive energy, such friction is also crucial to avoid the hunting phenomenon when the vehicle travels along tangents.
In this paper, a mechanically active centre plate is proposed, which increases the friction torque at the centre plate when the vehicle travels along tangents, and reduces such a friction torque when the vehicle negotiates curved portions of the track. Such conceptual design includes the principles of Operation and a needed preliminary
experimental model to assess the potential benefits as well as the feasibility of such equipment.
An experimental testing rig has been proposed to study the dynamic interaction between a liquid cargo and the carrying vehicle during turning maneuvers. The basic operational principle of the testing rig consists in simulating the lateral accelerations associated to turning maneuvers through the use of a tilt table.
While the experimental capabilities of the testing rig include the analysis of the effects of the cars on the whole transport infrastructure, including sleepers and ballast, a first use of the rig considered the effect of sloshing cargo on the level of dynamic forces transmitted to the rails. Such test was used to validate a simplified theoretical approach consisting of a two degree-of-freedom double pendulum mechanical system, where a simple pendulum, representing the sloshing cargo, is articulated to the spring-supported vehicle chassis, which is modelled as an inverted torsional pendulum. While the theoretical results exhibit a high correlation with the experimental data, the main discrepancy between both outputs, relates with the frequency of the residual vibration, once the lateral acceleration input is ceased. Such difference in frequency, would imply an underestimation of the number of loading cycles to which the infrastructure is subjected. On the other hand, the peak values are within acceptable difference levels.