Study of transitional phenomena in rail vehicle dynamics in relation to the reliability and operational state of the continuous welded rail track in terms of rail joints

Abstract

This paper presents the results of experimental and numerical studies on reliability and monitoring issues of railway infrastructure in terms of safety and operation. The state of knowledge concerning methods of assessing track condition, in particular rail joints used in continuous welded rail track of railway lines is described. Experimental results of rail joints used in track transition zones and the results of numerical studies/tests of the rail vehicle-track model are outlined. It is demonstrated, basing on the analyses of the experimental results, that not only should the rail joints used in continuous welded rail track be diagnosed during their acceptance, but also during their operation. It is proven that the currently used methodology for testing welded rail joints applied during acceptance testing of contact track is not fully correct and leads to misinterpretation of the measurement results. Moreover, the results of numerical simulation tests presented in this paper confirm the possibility of diagnosing the condition of rail joints by any vehicle passing over such a track equipped with a suitable system.

Modeling the dynamics of changes in CO2 emissions from Polish road transport in the context of COVID-19 and decarbonization requirements

“…Emissions from transport account for 20-25% of anthropogenic global carbon dioxide emissions [17,37], of which 71.7% are from road transport, but taking into account the production of cars and the construction of road infrastructure, this number increases to 37% of all emissions [7,14,16,24]. Transport uses 30% of the world' energy.…”