Design Optimization for Railway Transition Zones

Transition zones in railway tracks, which occur at changes in track form and or substructure properties, are known to cause issues with track degradation. Examples can be found where a track section, usually a ballast track, transits to a slab track to cross a roadway or waterway through supporting structures such as bridges, level crossings,...

Multi-stakeholder service life design for rail level crossings

Improvement in rail asset safety, comfortability and serviceability is gaining importance. This requires effective service life management by incorporating multi-stakeholder desires in the early design stage. Typical stakeholders are asset owners, train users and maintenance service providers. To allow for this change, the traditional single...

Optimal design of rail level crossings and associated transition zones using adaptive surrogate-assisted optimization

Transition zones such as level crossing and bridge approaches are critical links in railway networks due to higher degradation rates and maintenance needs. In this context, parametric optimization has been applied to improve the design in transition zones; however, it requires a more computationally efficient tool to support repetitive...

Extreme-oriented sensitivity analysis using sparse polynomial chaos expansion: Application to train–track–bridge systems

The use of sensitivity analysis is essential in model development for the purposes of calibration, verification, factor prioritization, and mechanism reduction. While most contributions to sensitivity methods focus on the average model response, this paper proposes a new sensitivity method focusing on the extreme response and structural limit...

A Co-simulation Solution for Vehicle-Track Interaction Dynamics Problems

A co-simulation solution based on direct equilibrium of contact forces is proposed to simulate vehicle-track interaction (VTI) dynamics. It is developed in two platforms, which presents an iterative feedback loop that exchanges contact force files and structure response field in real-time. The load vector acting on the structure is described by...

Systems thinking approach for improving maintenance management of discrete rail assets: a review and future perspectives

Performance evaluation and maintenance planning are gaining importance with ageing rail infrastructure and increasing demand on track safety and continuous availability. The discrete/point railway assets (e.g. bridges, level crossings) together with extended track sections constitute the main railway network infrastructure. The former has...

Infrastructure maintenance and replacement optimization under multiple uncertainties and managerial flexibility

Infrastructure maintenance and replacement decisions are subject to uncertainties such as regular asset degradation, structural failure, and price uncertainty. In the engineering domain, Markov Decision Processes (MDPs) typically focus on uncertainties regarding asset degradation and structural failure. While the literature in the engineering...

Reliability-based life cycle costing analysis for embedded rails in level crossings

Reliability-based life cycle costing analysis (LCCA) supports optimized decisions on capital and operational expenditures for engineering asset management. In addition, it allows investigation of the impact of maintenance decisions on designing the service life of assets. The application of reliability-based LCCA in railway practice is...