S-CODE: Switch and Crossing Optimal Design and Evaluation

The overall aim of the S-CODE project is to investigate, develop, validate and initially integrate radically new concepts for switches and crossings that have the potential to lead to increases in capacity, reliability and safety while reducing investment and operating costs.

Main goal of the Project

The project is included in the European Framework Horizon 2020 and correspond to the Call: H2020 – S2R-OC-IP3-01-2016, specific for Shift2Rail. Shift2Rail is the first European rail initiative to seek focused research and innovation (R&I) and market-driven solutions by accelerating the integration of new and advanced technologies into innovative rail product solutions. Shift2Rail promotes the competitiveness of the European rail industry and will meet changing EU transport needs. R&I carried out under this Horizon 2020 initiative will develop the necessary technology to complete the Single European Railway Area (SERA).

The overall aim of the S-CODE project is to investigate, develop, validate and initially integrate radically new concepts for switches and crossings that have the potential to lead to increases in capacity, reliability and safety while reducing investment and operating costs.

Project Description

The S-CODE project will identify radically different technology concepts that can be integrated together to achieve significantly improved performance for S&C based around new operating concepts (e.g. super-fast switching, self-healing switch).

The project will build on existing European and national research projects (in particular, the lighthouse project In2Rail, Capacity4Rail and Innotrack) to bring together technologies and concepts that will significantly reduce the constraints associated with existing switch technologies and develop a radically different solution.

The project will be divided into three phases:

1. Phase 1: Requirements and initial design – focusing on understanding constraints and critical requirements, and developing a radically different architecture and operation that makes use of technologies from other domains.
2. Phase 2: Technical development – undertaking detailed modelling and simulation to identify an optimal configuration to maximise performance.
3. Phase 3: Validation and evaluation – testing (to TRL4) the design concepts and formally evaluating their performance in order that an integrated design can be presented for further development .

Within the S-CODE project, the carefully selected consortium members will build on existing European and national research projects (in particular, the lighthouse project In2Rail, Capacity4Rail and Innotrack) to bring together technologies and concepts that will significantly reduce the constraints associated with existing switch technologies and develop a radically different solution. As shown in Figure 1, the S-CODE project will run alongside sister projects: (i) the ongoing IN2RAIL lighthouse project, and (ii) the Shift2Rail joint undertaking S2R-CFM-IP3-01-2016 – Research into enhance track and switch and crossing system. It is anticipated that outputs from these projects will feed into the S-CODE project, in order to develop a TRL4 solution that can be later developed into Technology Demonstrator TD3.2 – Next Generation S&C.

Participants

1. THE UNIVERSITY OF BIRMINGHAM (United Kingdom)
2. Výhybkárna a strojírna, a.s. (Czech Republic)
3. FERROVIAL CONSTRUCTION SA (Spain)
4. Rhomberg Sersa Rail Holding GmbH (Austria)
5. RAIL SAFETY AND STANDARDS BOARD LIMITED (United Kingdom)
6. COMSA SAU (Spain)
7. LOUGHBOROUGH UNIVERSITY (United Kingdom)
8. VYSOKE UCENI TECHNICKE V BRNE (Czech Republic)
9. UNIVERZITA PARDUBICE (Czech Republic)

Ferrovial Agroman participation

Ferrovial Agroman will support the academic organisms of the project providing its experience in the following fields; S&C installation, S&C maintenance, S&C logistics, BIM, intelligent infrastructure, high speed railway design and construction and innovative construction.

ResultadExpected Outcomes, Benefits and Impact

The technologies and potential results involved in the project are listed as follows:

• Modular switch and crossing architecture that allows subsystems to be easily changed or upgraded such that the gains in S&C system performance available from the adoption of new concepts can be realised progressively without the need for complete system renewal, thus allowing benefits to be attained more rapidly.
• Resilience-based design methodologies, maintenance free and degradation free systems and self-adjusting technologies that will allow complete self-inspection and self-correcting and healing functionality through the development of an S&C immune system, contributing towards a 50% improvement in the reliability and availability of switches.
• New concepts that utilise new materials and construction techniques, together with an optimised wheel-rail interface to realise a new movement principle which has the potential to contribute to a reduction in the life cycle cost of switches by up to 30%.
• Integrated system, including a fail-safe locking mechanism design is arrived at that mitigates all risks associated with technical failure, human error and influencing external factors, that may result in incidents occurring, thus ensuring that the number and magnitude of incidents is reduced and the safety of passengers and the work force is retained at the highest level.
• Significantly increase the allowable running speed of trains while also dramatically decreasing the switching time in order to contribute to a capacity improvement of up to 100%.

Funding

This project has been granted (100% of the budget) by the Horizon 2020 and the Shift2Rail initiative.