PSI - Issue 22

Cristina Reis et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 22 (2019) 189–193 Author name / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2019) 000 – 000

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 Equipment’s fatigue – Another aspect that can also be related with railway accidents is the equipment structural fatigue, from broken rails, track deformation (withers or warps), wheel and axle ruptures, among others;  Signaling equipment failure – Any failure of the signaling system, which results in a less restrictive signal than required;  Human failure – Risk of human failure associated with the performance of locomotive operators and management companies’ employees. Probably, this is one of the most difficult types of occurrence to prevent, as focuses on human action, which depends on many factors: fatigue, sudden illness, distraction, ignorance, among others. In Europe, in the year of 2009, 1391 people have died in rail accidents (Evans, 2011). In 2017, the most regular accident in Europe was “Accidents with people triggered by railway rolling stock” with 1080 occurrences (Pordata, 2019). Portugal is one of the European countries with few railway accidents. According to the Pordata portal (Pordata, 2019), in 2017, have happened in Portugal 29 railway accidents, 13 more than the previous year. The most recurrent type of accident was “Accidents with people triggered by railway rolling stock” with 19 occurrences, followed by 7 accidents in railroad crossings and derailment accidents with 3. To minimize the accident rate or impact is important to modernize tracks, train people and define safety plans. To correctly do so, it is necessary to know where to act and what to improve. These are recognized by analyzing previous accidents and what went wrong. Thus, the present study aims to analyze railway accidents that happened in Portugal, in order to learn from them and to minimize their occurrence. A database will be created to perform a statistical analysis, making it possible to know accidents critical factors and deeply understand patterns and details. 2. Methodology The adopted methodology for the elaboration of the present study consists, initially, by making bibliographical research about the railway theme, with a special focus on the Portuguese context. Thus, it will be possible to characterize its current state, as well as identify all types of occurrences recorded in 2014 and 2017. Railway accidents data from those years were collected by analyzing the List of Significant Accidents from the Railway Annual Security Reports produced by the IMT (IMT, 2014; IMT 2017). All of the occurrences and/or accident characteristics and circumstances were identified, such as their category, severity, period of the day, among others, for the selected years. To perform the information collection for the database, the following aspects and assumptions were considered and identified:  Month of the year, subdivided by quarter;  Month day;  Weekday;  Hour, subdivided by day period:

o Morning – 6 am -12 am; o Afternoon – 12 am - 6 pm; o Evening – 6 pm - 0 am; o Night – 0 am - 6 am.

Severity: o Mortal - in the existence of the fatalities;

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o Serious - serious or minor injuries and/or prolonged road interruptions; o No severity - in case of road interruption and/or emergency plan activation; o Incident - in the case of “near -accident".

Accident classification: o Collisions; o Derailment;

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o Accident on the level crossing; o Accident with persons caused by moving rolling stock; o Equipment Fatigue;