No abstract

Ongoing concerns regarding environmental protection encourage further research aimed at the development of environmentally-friendly products. Certain research activities and industrial applications have broken the paradigm of using mineral oil for hydraulic systems by providing solutions with biodegradable hydraulic fluids. Petroleum-based hydraulic fluids are not able to meet this demand due to their often toxic properties and their environmental effects. Therefore, ecologically-acceptable fluids based on natural and synthetic esters are increasingly used as pressure fluids. Knowledge of the influence of contaminants on the biodegradability characteristics and ageing of biodegradable hydraulic fluids is a prerequisite for the successful application of these fluids in hydraulic systems. Accordingly, in this study, new information obtained from commercial biodegradable fluids (hydraulic oil environmental ester synthetics (HEES)) under the influence of common contaminants (water, mineral oil, copper solid particles, and oxygen) present in current hydraulic systems has been investigated. Based on oxidation and hydrolytic stability tests, the biodegradability characteristics and ageing of biodegradable fluids are analysed, and the influence of contaminants is described. A comparison between fluid samples with different contaminants has shown that both the total acid number (TAN) and viscosity change significantly as a consequence of ageing in the presence of water and solid particles of copper, while the biodegradability characteristic was modified mainly by contamination with mineral oil.

The sustainable development of geo-strategic transport networks plays a key role to meet the current expansion of the demand for commerce and economic growth. In this paper, a new geo-strategic railway network for freight services is designed with the purpose of meeting the needs of current and future demands for freight transport in the state of Santa Catarina, South Brazil. The freight flows of bulk cargo, containers, and refrigerated and liquid cargo observed in 2005 and 2015 and expected for 2023 have been analyzed and assigned to a fully connected railway network. The number of trains to meet all the demands has been identified. The links that would have a minimum number of daily trains running on them have also been identified and analyzed. New assignments are proposed and visualized using GIS. Next, location and technical specifications of specialized intermodal terminals focused on the customers’ and operators’ needs are discussed. The study shows that technological specifications for terminal operations play an important role when dealing with multiple freight types and contribute to better use of the existing infrastructure.

In this paper, an overview of the history of education in railway and metro engineering in Brazil is presented, including its beginnings, its apogee, its near extinction, and its return at the beginning of the 21st century. The trajectory of the Brazilian professional education began with the implementation of small railway workshops located along the railway which were outside of the regular education system. At the end of the 20th century, the economic crisis, privatization, and drastic reduction of investment led to the scrapping and almost eradicating of the Brazilian rail network, followed by the death of railway education in Brazil. In recent years, the railway industry was stimulated, giving way to large investments, impacting and creating new opportunities for development in Brazil. This was one of the fundamental aspects for the development of new professional higher education programs in the railway and metro sector in Brazil. The first project to be implemented in Brazil was the course on railway and metro engineering of the Federal University of Santa Catarina. This course aims to provide structured training in four main areas: vehicle design, operation, maintenance, and train and metro management.

No abstract