Adif awards to the team lead by Consultrans a research project for the development of switches and crossings degradation models, analysis of their life cycle and implementation in its Asset Management Platform.
Last February, Adif awarded to the team lead by Consultrans and also formed by Antonio Nebrija University, CSIC and the Institute of Applied Electromagnetism, a research project that will be carried out for two years and whose aim will be to analyze the current switches and crossings installed in the Adif railway network, in order to identify their current status, as well as their potential damage. This is intended to improve the maintenance of these switches and crossings during their period of operation
During the research, models will be made considering the vehicle-track interaction. With these models, it will be possible to identify the forces that occur during train traffic and the fatigue of the switches and crossing’s elements (switch rail, stock rails, check rail, crossing, drives, switch rail detectors, bolts, among others).
With this models’ results, it is intended to identify the possible failure modes, taking into account the observed forces and the corresponding fatigue of the materials.
The customization of these results will allow their implementation in Adif’s Asset Management Platform, and thus predict the evolution of future states of the track elements and determine homogeneous maintenance criteria together with renovation plans, optimizing economically the life cycle cost (LCC) of the switches and crossings.
