UNICO4RAIL aims to contribute to the development and deployment of a user-friendly and open and validated methodology and tool for the use of railway stakeholders. This tool would enable the quantification of the impacts (wear rate, crack propagation rate, track settlement rate, energy consumption, sound power level, etc.) through the entire life cycle of the train/infrastructures (investment, maintenance and operation) and the comparison between different scenarios through simulation. It will include to develop, test and validate a cost modelling methodology valid and widely accepted, which can reflect and quantify the global impact of running gear performance on the rail system economics, where the calculations will be able to consider, with various level of approximation, the different stakeholders¿ viewpoints and to allow searching possible common win-win effects. The modules will be: 1) an infrastructure module analyzing different infrastructure problematica due to deterioration rate and physical variables and related with the unavailability of the infrastructure due to maintenance work caused by the vehicles, 2) an energy module accounting for the energy consumption of auxiliary bogie components and its impacts onto the CO2 emissions, input for Life Cycle Cost (LCC) calculation, 3) a noise module to calculate its influence on comfort issues and the LCC, 4) a vehicle module to asses affordable wheel diameter reduction due to re-profiling, including wear calculation procedure.
The model will setup and provide with a set of default reliable values for calculations as fixed input parameters for friction coefficient, infrastructure parameters, etc.
The main reference studies will be those concerning the Universal Cost Model developed in the lighthouse H2020 project ROLL2RAIL.
The State-of-the art depicted above clearly demonstrated the possibility to manage the natural complexity of a reliable universal cost model as well as the need to refine the present version of models to make it universal, both in terms of comprehensiveness and user friendliness. The ambition of UNICO4RAIL is to make concrete and exploitable steps forward beyond the state of the art. This is to be done without aiming too low (e.g. only improvements with marginal impact but for which a lot of work is required) nor too high (e.g. proposing to have the solution for problems that are certainly complex and required an approach that is system based and step-wise concerted). The key advances are to achieve and make available for the public a model: i) complete, consistent and scientifically robust; ii) tested and validated; iii) A widely accepted and recognized; iv) user friendly. It must be ready to quantify the global impact of improved running gear performances on the rail system economics.
The specific advances beyond state-of-the-art are here highlighted by single modules.
INFRASTRUCTURE
Methodological upgrade of ROLL2RAIL model of damages to switches and crossings, methodological upgrade including the effect of bad substructure conditions of ROLL2RAIL model of vertical settlement,
methodological upgrade including non-constant failure rates and imperfect maintenance in specific operational contexts (e.g. by Proportional Hazard Models) of ROLL2RAIL model of failure generation process, methodological upgrade including the effect of maintenance work caused by the vehicles of ROLL2RAIL model of infrastructure unavailability.
ENERGY
Methodological upgrade including the efficiency of traction system factors of correlation among physical variables, consumption and emissions, modelling of energy consumption of auxiliary bogie components (air springs, active elements, etc.)
NOISE
Modelling of exterior noise emissions influences on the costs on infrastructure charge calculation criteria and interior noise emissions influences on the passengers' comfort.
VEHICLE
Methodological upgrade: i) to include standard values setup by users on determination of wheels's diameter reduction due to re-profiling, module, methodological upgrade including non-constant failure rates and imperfect maintenance in specific operational contexts (e.g. by Proportional Hazard Models) of failure generation process adopted by ROLL2RAIL, ii) to exclude the update of the profile (e.g. wear distribution on wheels' flange and tread areas to decelerate the achievement of thickness limits).