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fib TG 3.3 Bulletin
Published in Joan-Ramon Casas, Dan M. Frangopol, Jose Turmo, Bridge Safety, Maintenance, Management, Life-Cycle, Resilience and Sustainability, 2022
E. Apostolidi, A. Strauss, F. Sattler, H. Sousa
Current road and railway infrastructure in Europe face major challenges such as aging materials, increasing traffic loads, effects from environmental changes, codes upgrading and limited budget for maintenance. Critical infrastructure network elements, such as bridges and tunnels, among others, are aging and many of them have reached or exceeded their service life. Furthermore, maintenance resources are too limited and should be used in an optimised approach to counteract the growing demand for preservation. Moreover, maintenance deficiency accelerates the structural deterioration and the safety risk of infrastructure. This can be confirmed, for example, by several major failures of road and railway bridges, such as the collapse of the Morandi Bridge in Genoa, Italy (2018), and of the Salzbachtal Bridge in Wiesbaden, Germany (2021). This leads to the necessity of continuous re-evaluation of the condition assessment methods for infrastructure elements – i.e., more pro-active towards damage detection, in addition to the regular structure inspections. Standard and innovative methods of Non-Destructive Testing (NDT) and Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) have supported significantly in this direction (Ivanković et al., 2020).
Minimizing Delays on Single-Line Train Scheduling
Published in Eren Özceylan, Surendra M. Gupta, Sustainable Production and Logistics, 2021
Muzaffer Alım, Çağrı Koç, Saadettin Erhan Kesen
In 2018, despite all the efforts, the share of railways in passenger transportation holds only 2.5% and the ratio of freight is at 3.7% in total (TCDD 2018b). It is essential to make railways more attractive to increase this ratio that is below the European average. Moreover, the railway is a greener and cleaner type of transportation mode than the road in environmental impacts. The average CO2 emission (g/tonne-km) is 45 for diesel-electric powered railways, 123 for road freight transportation. The numbers show that railway transport produces almost three times less CO2 emission than road transport. A similar effect can be observed on the emission of nitrous oxide (NOx) — road transport produces 75% more NOx as compared to railways (Wee et al. 2005). Railway transportation is much more advantageous in case of the required occupancy rate, provided not only in terms of emissions but also energy consumption efficiency (Skrucany et al. 2017).
Applications of Formal Methods, Modeling, and Testing Strategies for Safe Software Development
Published in Qamar Mahboob, Enrico Zio, Handbook of RAMS in Railway Systems, 2018
Alessandro Fantechi, Alessio Ferrari, Stefania Gnesi
The challenges posed by the new scenarios of railway transportation (liberalization, distinction between infrastructure and operation, high speed, European interoperability, etc.) have a dramatic impact on the safety issues. This impact is counterbalanced by the growing adoption of innovative signaling equipment (the most notable example is the European Rail Traffic Management System/European Train Control System) and monitoring systems (such as onboard and wayside diagnosis systems). Each one of these devices includes some software, which in the end makes up the major part of their design costs; the malleability of the software is paramount for the innovation of solutions. On the other hand, it is notorious how software is often plagued by bugs that may threaten its correct functioning: how can the high safety standards assumed as normal practice in railway operation be compatible with such threats?
A comparison between ARIMA, LSTM, ARIMA-LSTM and SSA for cross-border rail freight traffic forecasting: the case of Alpine-Western Balkan Rail Freight Corridor
Published in Transportation Planning and Technology, 2023
Miloš Milenković, Miloš Gligorić, Nebojša Bojović, Zoran Gligorić
Rail freight transport represents the most environmentally friendly mode of transport and plays an important role in the freight transport market (European Environment Agency 2020; Gholamizadeh, Zarei, and Yazdi 2022). Besides its environmental advantage, rail freight transport can provide more reliable, safer, cheaper, and faster transport service under a higher level of harmonization of transport and technological processes (European Union Agency for Railways 2018; Zunder and Islam 2018). Increasing requirements in terms of quality and availability of rail freight services in Europe have led to the need for the creation of a single European rail area by establishing international rail corridors (DG Move 2011). Creating dedicated rail freight corridors enhances the competitiveness of railways, leveraging their capacity and suitability for efficient and cost-effective long-distance freight transportation (Shi et al. 2014).
Potential demand for coastal shipping in Queensland: a behavioural econometric analysis
Published in Maritime Policy & Management, 2023
Peggy Schrobback, Elnaz Irannezhad, Carlo G. Prato
Moreover, high development and maintenance costs of road infrastructure, significant road safety issues, and increasing road congestion (particularly in metropolitan areas of south-east Queensland) are reasons for exploring alternative freight mode options. While rail transport offers freight transport services at lower rates, it is facing issues such as the need for investments in upgrades of the railway system and maintenance of tunnels and bridges. Mitchell and McAuley (2009) argued that the mode choice in the Australian long-distance context depends on the nature of the freight and requirements of shippers as it affects the relative importance of cost of service and quality. For example, for perishable and high-value commodities, time-sensitive door-to-door services may matter to shippers rather than line-haul services. Currently, sea transport is selectively offered for non-bulk freight by ships under foreign flag.
Impact of the gap distance between two adjacent external windshields of a high-speed train on surrounding flow characteristics: an IDDES study
Published in Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics, 2022
Fan Cheng, Xiao-Hui Xiong, Ming-Zan Tang, Xiao-Bai Li, Xin-Ran Wang
The high-speed train, as a popular mode of intercity transportation, has been rapidly developed owing to the advantages of high efficiency, comfort, safety, and environmental protection. High-speed trains are being operated at speeds of up to 350 km/h, such as the Chinese Standard EMU. This has worsened the aerodynamic problems; for example, a significant increase in aerodynamic drag not only decreases railway transportation efficiency, increases energy consumption, and leads to wastage of resources, but also produces noise, affecting the surrounding environment along the railway. With increasing operating speeds, the aerodynamic behavior of high-speed trains has attracted significant attention, primarily because it accounts for approximately 80% of the total drag (Tian, 2019). Hence, it is necessary to advance the optimization of high-speed trains in terms of aerodynamic characteristics.