PSI - Issue 39

Giovanni Pio Pucillo et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 39 (2022) 700–710 Author name / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2019) 000–000

701

2

1. Introduction Rising traffic demand, of both people and goods, as well as the transportation of hazardous and non-hazardous materials between different Countries, require particular attention for the fatigue design as well as the maintenance planning of railway superstructures (Jeong, Tang, and Orringer 1997; Zerbst 2008). To have an idea of the extension of railway superstructure in Europe, Fig. 1-a shows the distribution of the main railway lines in Europe and the train speeds that they can support, keeping in mind that High-Speed lines represent the real core business of the respective railway managers (see also Table 1), and that are more susceptible to high security levels (Zerbst et al. 2009), because of restrictive standard required for a safe transportation at speed greatest than 250/300 km/h. Fig. 1-b, instead, shows the freight routes, which are another important, productive aspect of the railway transportation.

Baltic - Adriatic

(December2008)

a)

b)

North Sea - Baltic

Mediterranean

Orient / East – Med.

Scandinavian – Med.

Rhine - Alpine

Atlantic

North Sea – Med.

Rhine - Danube

Fig. 1 – Railway network in Europe. Medium-High speed (a) and cargo (b) lines.

The increase of railway transportation is a worldwide tendency, and is mainly due to four factors: • railway transportation can reach both big and small Cities, today with more and more reduced times; • it is cheaper than the airplane for mobility of people; • it is cost-effective for transportation of goods and people, compared to road transport; • it is characterized by the smallest production of pollution compared to both aeronautical and road transport. This is also a sensible point considered between the goals of Horizon 2020.