by cidaut | Nov 7, 2014 | Sin categoría
The final conference of the European RESTRAIL project (Reduction of Suicides and Trespasses on Railway property) was held to present the lessons learnt within the project, its final results and the future way forward.
The European RESTRAIL (Reduction of Suicides and Trespasses on RAILway property) project was brought to a close on September 18th 2014 at the UIC premises at Paris, France. This was the occasion to learn more about this successful project, its results and the future way forward. Around 100 participants from Europe as well as other countries (such as USA and Australia), attended the final conference of this European project. RESTRAIL aimed at reducing the occurrence of suicides and trespasses on railway property and the costly service disruption caused by these events. One central objective of RESTRAIL was to provide the rail industry with the analysis of cost-effective prevention and mitigation measures as well as with recommendations and guidance materials to optimise the implementation of these measures. The final outcome is a toolbox to support the decision makers in taking practical steps to reduce suicides and trespasses and to mitigate the consequences once that these events occur.Mr Jean-Pierre Loubinoux, UIC Director-General, delivered the opening speech of these conferences, highlighting the role of different experts working together on both societal and technical issues focused on the reduction of trespassing and suicides. Afterwards, Mrs Ann Billiau, INFRABEL General Director, gave a keynote focused on an example from Belgium, explaining that it has the more dense and heavy network in the world with easily accessible tracks and thus dramatic consequences. Mrs Billiau referred to the toolbox as a dynamic and evolutionary tool, where stakeholders could find a general guidance explaining how to analyse the measures and their implementation.
The Conferences followed through with the WP leaders’ presentations about different lessons learnt during the project referred to:
- Qualitative analysis of suicide and trespasses on railway property
- Assessment of measures targeted to reduce railway suicides and trespasses.
- Mitigation of Consequences by Improving Procedures and Decision Making
- Implementation and monitoring process of field tests
After these presentations, the most anticipated moment came with the Poster session. The results, obtained from each one of the evaluations, were presented by the responsible RESTRAIL partners. A total of 11 posters were shown during one and a half hour. The eleven evaluated measures were: warning signs and posters; societal collaboration to prevent railway suicide; gatekeeper training course for personnel working in a railway environment; gatekeeper course “Contact with a (possibly) suicidal person”; restriction of access to fast lines, using mid-platform fencing and other restrictions to access; education in schools for 8–11 year old children; video enforcement and sound warning; railway safety education programme¸ a combination of measures at Aydin station; Computer Based Training (CBT) Module for Responding Bodies to mitigate post-incident consequences and Forward Facing CCTV. CIDAUT presented the results obtained from the evaluation carried out together with ADIF at the stopping place of the University of Valladolid (Valladolid, Spain); where several warning signs and posters were implemented in order to know their effectiveness on the reduction of trespassers.
After the Poster session; the RESTRAIL toolbox was presented as the final output of the project. This guidance material has been designed in order to:
- Lead decision-makers through the process of selecting from the wide range available of preventative and mitigation measures
- Provide more detailed guidance on the implementation of those measures and provide a framework for collecting and structuring information in order to feed an accessible and documented database on implementation measures and efficiency across the rail community.
More information referred to this RESTRAIL toolbox is accessible at http://www.restrail.eu/toolbox/
Lastly, the Conferences concluded with an open discussion of some ideas concerning possible follow-up research activity. One of the most appreciated by those present was initiating new and more elaborated field tests in the future: some of the most promising measures could be selected and evaluated in longer field tests, in order to collect more reliable data and assess the beneficial effect achieved statistically.
The RESTRAIL project ended on September 30th, 2014, however the partners will continue to work together and organize periodic workshops, so that current and future partners can share the most recent knowledge and best practices from their countries.
For more information on the RESTRAIL project, please visit http://www.restrail.eu/ or contact juapla@cidaut.es.
by cidaut | Nov 7, 2014 | Sin categoría
The HITECO project is close to its end. Last 30th October the final workshop was carried out in ENEA facilities, near Rome. At this event, the project coordinator and several partners showed the most important tasks developed along the project and the main results obtained; insights about the future of the CSP sector, sealing systems for novel energy devices and “Industrial development driven by technology; Solar applications”, were some of the topics presented and discussed during the Conferences. Finally a technical tour was performed to show the new absorber tube placed on the test facilities and the testing operation results (http://www.hitecoproject.com/?p=971).
The last one and a half year of the project, its efforts have been focused on the development and validation of a prototype of the new concept of absorber tube for CSP that had been designed during the project. This new concept was been tested in a laboratory under off-sun conditions to analyze the thermal stability of the components and the behaviour of the new concept of vacuum chamber, providing good results in all the tests performed.
Finally, the new product was scaled and mounted on a CSP test facility placed at ENEA facilities near Rome to perform the on-sun tests of the product.
These test facilities are composed of a parabolic trough solar collector of 100m length and a molten salts management system used as heat transfer fluid along the tests. During the last year the project tasks have been focused on the manufacturing of a 100m length absorber tube to place it on those tests facilities, and the necessary efforts to adapt the supporting structure and the molten salts management system to be used to the new concept of the absorber tube.
These tasks were completed successfully completed and the system validation tests started at the beginning of last summer. At this moment, the main conclusions drawn are the following:
- The new concept of absorber tube has been validated, and likewise the following goals have been confirmed: the thermo-mechanical functionality, the ability to achieve high vacuum levels and keep them under different operating conditions.
- The first tests performed showned similar heat losses to those with current tube designs; the differentiating effect is focused on the analysis of the composition and pressure of the vacuum chamber and, on the other hand, the reduction of the heat losses through the absorber tube supports. Regarding performance, as the new tube concept, it has more effective solar collection area, it is expected that in the coming weeks the improvement in performance of the new tube design compared to current designs can be confirmed.
Thanks to the HITECO project, CIDAUT has gained knowledge and a valuable insight into the CSP technologies, and has developed and validated simulation methodologies to analyze the optical, thermal and thermo-mechanical behaviour of parabolic-trough solar collectors. On the other hand, a useful analytical tool to characterize the performance of absorber tubes in parabolic solar collectors has been carried out and has been validated using CFD simulation tools and experimental results.
by cidaut | Nov 7, 2014 | Sin categoría
ACOUTRAIN Final Conference:
“Virtual certification of acoustic performance for rolling stock”
Brussels (Belgium), 7th November 2014
The ACOUTRAIN project is a EU-funded European R&D project focussed on the development of procedures and calculation tools to simplify the present noise TSI noise test. The 3-years project has 15 European partners and its main objective is to reduce the time and costs associated to the TSI Noise conformity assessment by developing procedures for acoustic virtual testing. The project is coming to an end in December 2014 and ACOUTRAIN Final Conference on the 7th of November 2014 was the perfect opportunity to present the project results.
Programme:The workshop was held at the Thon Hotel Bristol Stephanie, Avenue Louise 91-93, B-1050 Brussels, and started around 9:00AM with a welcome speech from Dr. Philippe Citroën, Director General of UNIFE. Mr Jean-Marie Bodson, Technical Director of Standards & Regulations at Alstom Transport introduced the project together with the technical coordinator, Mr Nicolas Furio from UNIFE.The main results of ACOUTRAIN were presented during a full day event, structured in 5 main sections:
- Session 1 – Basic tools for virtual certification.
- Introduction to concepts of Virtual Testing
- Virtual Vehicle, process flowchart (WP1)
- Software definition + demonstration (WP4)
- Validation of software (WP4)
- Session 2 – Noise sources characterisation.
- Rolling noise: how to use TWINS; wheel roughness (WP2)
- Vehicle Source characterisation measurements (WP3)
- Integration effects (WP3)
- Session 3 – Methods related to virtual certification.
- Separation/transposition procedures (WP2)
- Simplified method (WP1)
- Specific situations, other metrics, use for
- END (WP1)
- Session 4 – Example application: NAT Case study.
- Measurement Campaign
- Modelling Concept
- Results
- Session 5 – Virtual testing within certification.
- Procedures: ACOUTRAIN proposals
- Discussion
- Summary of outcomes, open issues
- (Recommendations for future research)
The Final Conference was an opportunity to discuss about virtual certification. A dedicated session for questions and answers was opened in the last part of each session.
by cidaut | Nov 7, 2014 | Sin categoría
The EU’s flagship electromobility project, Green eMotion, has organised for the first time an electric vehicle rally from the Green eMotion demonstration regions to Brussels. Over the past few days, five teams – EdF (Strasbourg), ESB (Belfast), RSE (Milano), TÜV Nord (Hannover), and Verbund (VIenna) – drove their electric vehicles to Brussels, using different charging stations along the way. The tour culminated on september 18th with a high-level conference with the Vice-President of the European Commission and Commissioner for Transport Mr Siim Kallas. A parallel interoperability demonstration showed that the marketplace developed within the project now allows Europe-wide access to charging infrastructure.
“Green eMotion has achieved major milestones during the 3 ½ years of project work to enable the mass market roll-out of electromobility: Prototype implementation of a really scalable, open ICT system enabling Europe-wide access to charging infrastructure, development of necessary standards for electromobility and a roadmap for future standardisation work, detailed technical work (from grid impact studies to the evaluation of electric vehicles under real life conditions) as well as the preparation of guidelines and policies,” said Dr. Heike Barlag, Siemens AG, the project coordinator of Green eMotion.
Following the keynote speech by Vice-President Kallas on the future of electromobility in Europe and the view from the electricity industry presented by EURELECTRIC Secretary General Mr Hans ten Berge, Green eMotion representatives from partners Enel, IBM and RSE explained some of the project’s successes, including the demonstration of a truly interoperable electromobility system, the setting up of a marketplace for roaming throughout Europe, and the work carried out on standardisation.
As a second highlight of the event, Green eMotion partners demonstrated their developed interoperability solution with electric vehicles and charging infrastructure from different operators throughout Europe. The charging infrastructure for the demonstration was provided by EDF, Endesa, Enel, ESB, Iberdrola and RWE. The demonstration showed how users can easily charge their electric car independently from their local infrastructure operator. This is made possible via the Green eMotion marketplace platform provided by IBM, an open ICT infrastructure developed within the project that includes a clearinghouse service from SAP for roaming. This marketplace was also used during the Rally to Brussels when the teams – running cars from BMW, Nissan, Opel and Renault – charged with their own user-ID at the charging stations of other project partners.
Other working areas of the Green eMotion project addressed by speakers in the conference included the effect of electric vehicles on the power system, sustainable business models for electromobility, increasing the acceptance of electric cars, and evaluating and influencing their range. The presentations from this conference can be found on the Green eMotion project website www.greenemotion-project.eu.
About Green eMotion: The project’s 42 partners have joined forces to explore the basic conditions that are needed for Europe-wide electromobility. The primary goal of the project is to demonstrate an interoperable electromobility system with easy access to charging infrastructure all over Europe. Such a system is only feasible with standards that can be adopted internationally. To this end, practical research is being conducted in different demonstration regions all over Europe with the aim of developing and demonstrating a commonly accepted and user-friendly framework that combines interoperable and scalable technical solutions with a sustainable business platform. The project is funded by the EU and runs until February 2015. More information is available at: www.greenemotion-project.eu
by cidaut | Nov 7, 2014 | Sin categoría
The system named as “ILLUMETRIC”, aimed to assess street lighting facilities, was presented in September in the United Kingdom during “The Professional Lighting Summit” congress, organised by the Institution of Lighting Professionals (ILP).
The ILLUMETRIC system, developed by CIDAUT and whose services are currently being commercialized by CIDRO, was presented during the last “The Professional Lighting Summit” held in Solihull, near Birmingham. This is probably the most important event oriented to lighting professionals in the United Kingdom. The presentation of the system was done during two workshops, one each day of the congress, and attracted a very interesting group of assistants, including representatives of public administrations and private companies.
ILLUMETRIC uses a van equipped with a wide set of sensors and cameras conceived to perform surveys of street lighting facilities. The measures are registered with the vehicle in motion, driven at the speed of the roadway, which represents an enormous advantage with regards to traditional handheld measurement systems.
The system includes instrumentation to provide complete information about the levels of light and position of the luminaries, allowing advanced features like the creation of “light maps” or the inventory of light points. This information can be used in activities like energy efficiency audits, maintenance surveys, project acceptances, etc.
Beyond all doubt, ILLUMETRIC can be considered as one of the most advanced systems of its kind in the world, opening a whole field of opportunities related to the adequate use of energy to light our streets and roads.
Learn more about this system at www.illumetric.com.
Illuminance map with the levels of light measured by the ILLUMETRIC system and represented in Google Earth (image ©Google)
by cidaut | Nov 7, 2014 | Sin categoría
On September 26th, CIDAUT and the FP7 funded EVolution project were involved in the European Researchers Night, This event organized at Valladolid’s Science Museum is part of the dissemination activities coordinated from a European Commission funded project called Scientists for a better word.
This initiative aims at disseminating the European researchers work to a broad audience, in fact to all citizens, to raise awareness of the work done and the impact it has on society and in competitiveness for the local and regional industries. Among other advantages, this event allowed CIDAUT and other organizations involved in research, to directly contact students to promote scientific innovation and development.
CIDAUT and Valladolid’s University presented Evolution (
http://evolutionproject.eu/), a research project funded by the European Commission under the 7th Framework Programme. The objective of the project is to develop new materials which will significantly reduce the weight of the new generation of hybrid and electric vehicles. In particular, the work carried out developing light aluminium alloys and aluminium foams, as shown in the following image.
This open house dissemination event targeting the general population was the perfect example of transferring directly to society the effort that the European Commission is taking within their funded programmes. CIDAUT representative, Mr Jorge Martín, explained how Evolution project is promoting sustainable transport by designing a light weight EV. The impact of such a vehicle in the future cities by decreasing CO2 and noise pollution levels attracted strong interest among the visitors. It may be concluded that the event was a complete success in promoting research and innovation among the general population, as well as to raise awareness of the European Commission objectives with the Horizon 2020 programme.Valladolid’s Science Museum:
http://www.museocienciavalladolid.es/opencms/mcva/
EVolution Project: http://evolutionproject.eu/
by cidaut | Sep 5, 2014 | Sin categoría
CIDAUT is committed to continuously improve its processes, and its key process, the development of R&D projects could not be strange to it. In Lean philosophy we have found a way to achieve this goal, while enhancing the involvement and motivation of our people.
Lean is historically linked to the quality characteristics proposed by the Toyota Production System (TPS) and emphasizes mainly on operational efficiency and high quality in production.
Lean Project Management (LPM) is the application of Lean principles in the context of project management. LPM shares many principles in common with other lean concepts. The fundamental principle is based on creating more value with less “waste” by using Lean tools such as standardization, visual control, daily Kaizen, etc. LPM is not very different from traditional project management focusing in customer needs, processes and problems solving, but focuses on using agile methodologies which eliminate anything that does not add value to projects.
Our goal has always been to be more efficient managing our R&D projects, so we explored the Lean philosophy and its agile methodologies and made the decision to introduce LPM in our R&D projects. And so, we selected two pilot R&D projects on aluminium processing and both project teams were trained in LPM methodologies to learn the main concepts and tools.
For each of them, the whole team participated in the initial definition of the project which helped everyone to have complete information about objectives, project scope and deliverables of the work to be carried out. The initial A3 (Lean uses an A3 thinking method which establishes that all reports must fit into a DIN A3 size sheet) contains the limits of the project and is visible and accessible throughout the project lifetime.
The next step was the identification of the main milestones and the design of the project implementation. The planning based on deliverables facilitates the involvement of the team providing them with a clear vision of the work. This plan created a positive momentum in the team.
Afterwards, indicators were established to monitor the progress of the project and are reviewed in “kaizen meetings” held weekly. In these meetings, the kaizen leader reviews the planning with the team, updates the tasks to be performed along next two weeks, the state of the indicators (consumption of buffer and confidence curve) and identifies new standards that are necessary as well as problems to be discussed in parallel meetings.
The implementation of the full methodology is made through visual tools in a monitoring room, known as “Oobeya room”. This allows everyone to check information on the progress of the project at any moment.
It has been a hard road. Lean methodology is simple to apply but it is necessary to overcome “resistance to change”. Resistance appears whenever we need changing the way we have always done things and generate new work habits. This was the most difficult issue to solve and we have had to overcome many related problems. However, it is important to note that the effort has been worthy as now we have a more cohesive and involved team with a single common goal.
LPM has allowed us to get shorter lead times ensuring compliance with agreed deadlines; to have a more controlled planning available; to guarantee problems are detected earlier and are solved working together; to get complete and timely information for all involved people, etc. But the result we are most proud of is the increased motivation and involvement of the work team.
Considering the good experience achieved in R&D projects, we are acquiring knowledge in other agile methodologies commonly applied in Software Development Projects as SCRUM and eXtreme Programming in order to apply them in this kind of work. We expect to get such good results as well as promise to let you know in future issues of this newsletter!
by cidaut | Sep 5, 2014 | Sin categoría
Self-Learning Energy Efficient builDings and open Spaces (SEEDS) is a Research project co-funded by the European Commission under the Seventh Framework Program (Call FP7-2011-NMP-ENV-ENERGY-ICT-EeB). It started in September 2011 and its final tasks are scheduled for February 2015.
CIDAUT is one of the nine European partners in this project, coordinated by CEMOSA, which is focused on saving energy in the building sector through the development of specific optimization and self-learning methodologies, supported by new ICT and wireless technologies.
The SEEDS project has developed new technologies for optimizing building’s performance in terms of energy, comfort and life cycle costs. SEEDS applies an innovative building modelling methodology based on measurements and self-learning techniques. Modern optimization algorithms allows SEEDS to minimize energy consumption while keeping comfort and health conditions. A network of wireless sensors and actuators suitable for Building Automation Systems has been developed under SEEDS to facilitate its deployment and application to retrofitting of old buildings.SEEDS is an Energy Management System suitable not only for buildings but also for the surrounding open spaces. Its open architecture may be applied either in retrofitting of old buildings but also in new building designs.
It is based on research and scientific advances in wireless sensor technology, machine learning, and Bayesian networks, as well as standard statistical methods to enable the relationships between key variables to be continuously learned, facilitate prediction and enable control.
The technology is being tested in two very different validation pilots: an office building in Madrid (Hot Southern Europe) and a University building in Stavanger (Cold Northern Europe).
The core of the project has already been developed, including:
- Development of a modelling methodology for a wide spectrum of building types and energy systems and subsystems.
- Research and development of scalable implementations of global optimization algorithms.
- Development of self learning and optimization behavioural models for energy systems and subsystems in buildings.
- Development and adaptation of a network of Wireless Intelligent Sensors and Actuators (WISA) and design and implementation of communication middleware and configuration tools for the WISA.
- Development and refinement of anytime self-learning and optimization algorithms able to cope with the requirements of energy management systems.
- Definition of the RoadMap for the implementation and commissioning of SEEDS into the two validation pilots.
- Analysis of the energy facilities and performance of the two demo pilots, selection of sensors to evaluate the initial condition of the two demo pilots.
- Selection of the equipment to be monitored and controlled in both demo pilots, selection of sensors and actuators and design of wireless communication elements (nodes and gateways).
- Development of a MS Access database describing all relations between rooms, devices, sensors, actuators, signals, variables, comfort boundaries and energy consumption.
- Definition of control settings for a proper operation of building devices.
- Installation of wireless communication elements and the corresponding connections to sensors and actuators.
- Definition of a self-learning training procedure and adequate local control algorithms to run the equipment in the first few days of operation.
- Generation of a Graphical User Interface so as to the system is able to communicate with the operator.
- Development of the necessary software programs to connect all the elements and run the whole system.
- Definition and execution of system test plans.
Developments over the next six months will include:
- Run the system in both demonstrators, verifying the correct operation of algorithms and communication elements.
- Assessment of energy efficiency and energy savings achieved, by comparing the current energy consumption with the one measured before the implantation of the new system.
- Life cycle impact assessment of this new BEM (Building Energy Management) system.
- Post-occupancy study, based on a user survey.
- Development of a guide for “Best practices for energy efficient buildings and open spaces”.
At the end of this project we expect to have demonstrated the technical feasibility and verify the energy efficiency of a new control system for buildings applying optimization and self-learning algorithms based on the measured data. Wireless communication signals make it suitable to building retrofitting.
Scheme of core of SEEDS BEM core system
by cidaut | Sep 5, 2014 | Sin categoría
Within the scope of the Cleansky Programme, CIDAUT leads a research project aimed at the manufacturing of composite rotorcraft blades with very tight tolerances that will incorporate an Active Gurney Flap mechanism. Active Gurney Flap (AGF) systems enable the rotorcraft to safely operate with reduced tip speeds whilst preserving high performances with reduced fuel consumption and noise; something that constitutes one of the most challenging research areas leaded by the Green Rotorcraft Consortium in the Cleansky Programme: the development of Active Rotor Technologies.
Active Gurney Flap mechanisms scheme.
In the ACCUBLADE project, CIDAUT researches on the development of a robust and very accurate moulding process for the manufacturing of carbon fibre model blades that will be used for validation of the AGF systems through wind tunnel tests. Due to the small scale of the model blades, the dimensional requirements for the manufacturing are very tight, less than +/- 0,1mm on the aerodynamic profile. In order to fulfil the tight tolerances, not only the mould must be machined with high precision means, but also the cavity design must be defined with special consideration for minimizing any distortion during the process.
The analysis of potential process-induced distortions, such as warping or spring-in, has been carried out by means of process simulations based in accurate material parameters identified through laboratory material characterisation tests. The influence of different material and processing parameters including the weave pattern, ply stacking, mould interaction, curing temperature and pressure has been experimentally characterised and correlated with the simulation models. These have been developed for the prediction of the distortions that would appear during the processing of the model blades. Using this methodology, the design of the cavity can be defined to fulfil the required tolerances.
Mould design optimization methodology by means of process simulations.
During the near to follow validation stage, CIDAUT will partake in the processing of the model blades and the non destructive and destructive inspection tests that will be carried out to demonstrate the functionality of the tools and to validate the design methodology.
In particular, the following outcomes from the ACCUBLADE project will stand out among the technological expected results:
- An optimization methodology for tooling and moulds design based in accurate distortion simulations accounting for different thermal coefficients of the composite materials.
- A reduction in current development costs and lead-times for aeronautic composite parts, that usually need expensive and long lasting trial and error procedures to be carried out before a suitable mould cavity design is experimentally determined.
by cidaut | Sep 5, 2014 | Sin categoría
Since January 2013 CIDAUT has been working on the NEMESIS project, entitled “New Trends and Market Survey for the End of Life of Aircrafts. Eco Design Guideline”. CIDAUT has led the consortium working with three other partners (University of Valladolid, ITRB Ltd and PBLH International Consulting), all under the supervision of Fraunhofer Institute for Chemical Technology.
The dismantling of aircraft materials nowadays is not a real option; many planes lie abandoned around the world or have been sent to landfills.
To deal with this undesired situation, the NEMESIS project has designed a methodology which combines the expected market data with the current and expected future steps for a/c dismantling and recycling.
To achieve this ambitious goal, firstly a market survey was conducted (questionnaires and interviews) whre more than 1000 experts were surveyed. Afterwards, their responses were thouroughly analyzed and used to carry out a forecast study. To this end, years 2014 and 2024 were chosen as horizon basis, considering four different future scenarios.
In the course of the project an analysis of the technologies involved in the recycling processes was also conducted, identifying their most important characteristics.
With all this data an automatic decision tree was implemented, and two different conditions were analyzed: the cheapest process or the best quality. Afterwards, a complete application example was carried out as a case study for demonstration purposes. On this regard the Belly Fairing for an Airbus plane was chosen and the computer application was developed in MS Excel. Therefore this application can easily be used for any other component of the aircraft in the future.
Finally an economic sustainability study was conducted, where several estimations of the future of recycled materials were performed. These estimations were compared with those of the experts (obtained via the Market Survey) and the recycling methodologies previously calculated from an economic viewpoint were analyzed. This allowed a complete validation of the developed methodology.
The project finished last June and the results have met all the expectations, showing mainly the evolution of materials and, therefore, the future of aircraft recycling.
Thanks to this project, and others working in the same direction, the aircraft recycling will become a reality in the future. Perhaps, in a few years it will be possible to adapt aeronautical regulations in a similar way to those existing for the automotive industry.
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