PSI - Issue 17

João Morais et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 17 (2019) 448–455

455

João Morais et al. / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2019) 000 – 000

8

to be made, since the short railway track length tested did not appear to have any. In order to test the proposed system with higher vehicle speeds that translate usual operation conditions of railway vehicles, another experimental test campaign was performed. This new test campaign will be described on the second conference paper regarding this project.

5. Conclusions

The COURSE project included the design, development and demonstration of the applicability of an innovative and integrated approach to evaluate the performance of railway tracks, while also being able to identify the causes of common railway degradation defects. This paper presented an overall description of the system developed under the proposed concept. Also prototype implementation was discussed, together with the corresponding calibration tests, regarding system assessment. These calibration tests were performed on a railway track, adjacent to a maintenance yard. The track was instrumented with additional on- site equipment to serve as reference for the prototype’s assessment. The data obtained from the preliminary tests suggest that the proposed approach is adequate in this context. The first tests using the prototype on a railway track under regular operation will be presented on the second paper submitted to ICSI 2019 on this topic.

Acknowledgements

This work was carried out under the I&D COURSE project, co-financed by the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF) through the “ Programa Operacional Competitividade e Internacionalização ” (POCI), under the Portugal 2020 and Lisboa 2020 programs [LISBOA-01-0247-FEDER-017937]. Postdoctoral fellowship of the forth author [SFRH/BPD/107737/2015] was supported by “ Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia ”, through POCH co- fi nanced by the ESF and national funds of MCTES, Portugal.

References

European Standard EN 13848-1:2019. Railway applications - Track - Track geometry quality - Part 1: Characterisation of track geometry. 93100 - Construction of railways. Brussels: CEN/TC 256 - Railway applications, Comité Européen de Normalisation. Paixão, A., Fortunato, E., Calçada, R., 2015. The effect of differential settlements on the dynamic response of the train-track system: a numerical study. Engineering Structures 88, 216-224. Le Pen, L., Milne, D., Thompson, D., Powrie, W., 2016. Evaluating railway track support stiffness from trackside measurements in the absence of wheel load data. Canadian Geotechnical Journal 53, 1156-1166. Quibel, A., Hosseingholian, M., Guillevic, G., 2010. The role of stiffness in railway infrastructures and its measurement. IV Jornadas Internacionales: "Ingeniería para Alta Velocidad". Córdoba: Fundación Caminos de Hierro. INNOTRACK, 2008. Methods of track stiffness measurements. Thematic Priority 6: Sustainable Development, Global Change and Ecosystems Project no. TIP5-CT-2006-031415O, co-funded by the European Commission within the Sixth Framework Programme (2002-2006). Santos, C., Morais, P., Paixão, A., Fortunato, E., Asseiceiro, F., Alvarenga, P., Gomes, L., 2018. An integrated monitoring system for continuous evaluation of railway tracks for efficient asset management. 5th International Conference on Road and Rail Infrastructure, p. 8. Zadar, Croatia: University of Zagreb.