ACEM RAIL

Automated and cost effective maintenance for railway

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 Obiettivo del progetto (Objective)

'ACEM-Rail project deals with automation and optimisation of railway infrastructure maintenance. It focuses on the track. The final goal is to reduce costs, time and resources required for maintenance activities and increase the availability of the infrastructure. The project includes both conventional and high speed lines. ACEM-Rail project will mean an important step forward in railway infrastructure maintenance techniques for the following reasons: • Several technologies for automated and cost effective inspection of the track (subgrade and superstructure) condition will be developed and prototypes will be manufactured. These technologies will be applicable both to conventional and high speed lines. • Predictive algorithms will be developed to estimate the rail defects evolution. • Algorithms will be developed for an optimal planning of railway infrastructure maintenance tasks. For the moment, there are not appropriate optimisation models for the integrated scheduling of preventive and corrective operations. • Modes and tools will be developed in order to monitor the proper execution of corrective and preventive maintenance tasks. These technologies will be applied in mobile (hand.held) computers. This way execution and monitoring of maintenance tasks will be automated and optimized. • A novel technology based on intelligent systems will be developed for the optimal management of all the subsystems in the whole railway infrastructure system. A classification of all the different subsystem together with the selection of most relevant parameters will be carried out. The main benefits of the project are: (i) reduction of cost, (ii) increase in safety, quality and reliability of the service, (iii) increase of rail freight transport and, as a consequence, (iv) reduction in CO2 emissions.'

Introduzione (Teaser)

Timely identification of defects in rail infrastructure has major impact on costs and safety. Comprehensive automated technologies for inspection and maintenance scheduling and execution will provide a step-change in efficiency.

Descrizione progetto (Article)

Inspection and maintenance of complex railway infrastructures represents a large share of total infrastructure costs and track maintenance accounts for about 40% of that.

Track-associated maintenance includes those related to the track bed, subgrade and engineering structures such as bridges, tunnels and retaining walls.

Decreasing track-associated maintenance costs would have important impact on reducing operating costs of rail transportation systems.Doing that while enhancing safety and passenger comfort were the goals of the EU-funded project 'Automated and cost effective maintenance for railway' (http://www.acem-rail.eu (ACEM RAIL)).

The key to success was increasing automation throughout from monitoring to evaluation of defects to scheduling and execution of maintenance.

The team even included operator assistance in the field during execution of maintenance services.Of the six automated inspection technologies to evaluate track condition, the most promising employs fibre optic sensors.

Placed along the track and integrated in the trains themselves (both conventional and high-speed and both passenger and freight), the sensors facilitate frequent and cost-effective evaluation.

Major development work focused on data analysis and management of information obtained from the inspection systems.

The team created a centralised management system together with decision support software tools.

This would help in evaluating infrastructure condition, optimally scheduling maintenance, assisting operators in the field and automatically generating reports.ACEM RAIL developed a set of maintenance performance indicators to facilitate evaluation of sustainability in terms of cost, quality, safety and environmental impact.

Application in simulated scenarios, at a test and validation centre and in railway infrastructure demonstrated the significant benefits of the ACEM RAIL systems across the board.Outcomes have been widely disseminated in scientific papers, at exhibitions and workshops and through brochures and newsletters.

Commercialisation potential is clear in the creation of one spin-off and plans for another.ACEM RAIL technologies and tools will enhance the efficiency, safety and comfort of rail travel while decreasing operation and maintenance costs.

The software tools developed should also be easily adaptable to automation of inspection and maintenance for road transport.