by cidaut | Dec 21, 2021 | Energy, Sin categoría
The Spanish Railway Technology Platform (PTFE), whose technical secretariat is provided by the Spanish Railways Foundation, held its 16th Annual Assembly at the headquarters of the Spanish Railways Foundation on 17 November. This year the assembly returned to its normal on-site format. The meeting was chaired by Enrique Playán, Director of the Spanish Research Agency of the Ministry of Science and Innovation and José Carlos Domínguez Curiel, Manager of the Fundación de los Ferrocarriles Españoles.
Within the framework of the European Year of the Railway, the PTFE focused its debate on national and international R&D&I strategies, support instruments for the sector and the disruptive innovation vectors that will drive the railway mode in its consolidation as the backbone of sustainable, connected and safe mobility.
As usual in the PTFE Annual Assembly, the meeting included a specific session for the exhibition of innovative projects that ratify the capabilities of the ecosystem and have a positive impact on the competitiveness of the sector. Technology developments and new elements were presented by leading researchers and experts from different organisations.
On behalf of CIDAUT, Alfonso Horrillo contributed with the advances being made on renewable ammonia and bioethanol as hydrogen carriers in the railway. These developments will go deeper into the possibilities that the use of this energy will favour even more the energy efficiency that characterises the railway mode.
The 16th Annual Assembly ended with the presentation of the innovation strategies of two of the benchmark driving forces for the Spanish railway sector: RENFE and ADIF. The significant impact on the decline in rail transport caused by COVID-19, the liberalisation process, the Recovery, Transformation and Resilience Plan, the development of ERJU (Europe’s Rail Joint Undertaking), etc., have led to a review of the strategies of railway operators and managers in which the commitment to innovation is going to be a transcendental factor.
The most relevant innovation strategies and projects (own, collaborative and win win) were presented by Pilar Gorriz, Renfe’s Innovation Manager and José Conrado Martínez, Deputy Director of Innovation, both of whom explained their open approach to collaboration in the development of their innovation with the sector. Their organisations have a high potential to lead and undertake competitive and business processes that involve bringing innovations to the market with a greater potential for success.
More info: https://www.ptferroviaria.es/noticias/noticias.asp?item=86
by cidaut | Jan 19, 2015 | Sin categoría
Brussels (Belgium), 7 November 2014
The project ACOUTRAIN has come to its end, and its final event was held last November in Brussels, organised by UNIFE.
About 50 railway experts participated in the event, gathering a broad set of expertise in different knowledge fields like rolling stock manufacturers, testing laboratories, notified bodies for rolling stock homologation and representatives of the European Railway Agency.
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Nicolas Furio, Administrative Project coordinator, UNIFE
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Jean-Marie Bodson, Technical Director Standards & Regulations
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Philippe Citroën Director-General of UNIFE
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The main results of ACOUTRAIN were presented during the full day event, structured in 5 main sections:
- Session 1 – Basic tools for virtual certification.
Estelle Bongini from SCNF (technical project coordinator) started presenting an introduction to concepts of Virtual Testing developed in the project, establishing the initial framework to facilitate the understanding of the work carried out. In particular she gave a detailed description of the flowchart defined for the selection of the most appropriated virtual testing approach to use depending on the developed virtual vehicle. Afterwards Nathalie Cuny from Alstom and Giacomo Squicciarini from ISVR presented the software tool developed in the project, which name is the same as the project, and gave a quick in-site life demo on how to set up virtual vehicles with the new tool. Then they explained the work carried out for certification of the simulation tool, which can be applicable and extended to other simulation tools aiming to be used in the virtual testing framework.
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Estelle Bongini, Technical project coordinator
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Nathalie Cuny, WP4 leader, and Giacomo Squicciarini
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- Session 2 – Noise sources characterisation
David Thompson from ISVR gave indications on how to use the software tool TWINS, in particular with regards to wheel roughness, for which a dedicated study was developed to evaluate existing test methods. Ulf Orrenius from Bombardier reported about tests methods used to characterise individual noise sources of vehicles, like HVAC, motors, transformers… and eventually Benjamin Betgen from Vibratech described the research related to integration effects of noise sources and how existing calculation methods can represent it.
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David Thompson, WP2 leader
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Ulf Orrenius, WP3 leader
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Benjamin Betgen
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- Session 3 – Methods related to virtual certification
Transposition and separation procedures to separate rolling stock and track contributions to noise emission prediction were introduced by Michael Dittrich from TNO. Estelle Bongini clarified differences between the virtual testing approach and the simplified method in the Noise TSI. Application of virtual testing results for the evaluation of noise emission from railway infrastructures in the framework of the European Noise Directive was also studied.
- Session 4 – Example application: NAT Case study
The extensive measurement campaign carried out during the second year was presented by Maria Starnberg from Deutsche Bahn. Andre Bistagnino from Alstom described the modelling concept behind setting up virtual vehicles for virtual testing, for which the NAT train was taken as reference.
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Maria Starnberg, WP5 leader
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Andrea Bistagnino
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- Session 5 – Virtual testing within certification
Estelle Bongini and Maria Starnberg took the floor to describe one of the main project outcomes, the alternative procedures or approaches for virtual testing implementation, namely hybrid approach and extension of approval.
An interesting debate took place between presenters and the audience after each session, and input was given from the industry, notified bodies and ERA.
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
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.
