Project description
Innovative, cost-effective solution to prevent derailments
Railway track misalignment, caused by insufficient lateral resistance, poses a significant challenge for the transportation industry. Known as track misalignment or track buckle, this issue leads to additional dynamic forces in vehicles and increases the risk of derailment. In Europe, track maintenance operations to restore alignment account for a substantial 26 % of maintenance, and renewal costs surpass EUR 2 million annually. In this context, the EU-funded DINTRA project will introduce an innovative solution capable of significantly enhancing track lateral resistance and significantly reducing costs. By constructing three advanced demonstration elements in challenging conditions, the project seeks to eliminate costly track buckle events, reduce derailments, and revolutionise track maintenance practices.
Objective
Railway track lateral movement occurs when lateral resistance is not enough hold track in place. This movement is known as track misalignment (when it is a progressive defect associated to train loads) or track buckle (when it is an abrupt event associated mainly to unusually high temperatures).Track alignment must be restored as even small track misalignments induce additional dynamic forces in the vehicle.
Track maintenance operations to restore track alignment (tamping) require 26% of track maintenance and renewal cost (2.989M€/year in Europe). Besides, cost of rail grinding and renewal operations are estimated to be around 10% of total EU railway maintenance and renewal costs (1.118M€/year).
Moreover track misalignment eventually causes a great risk of derailment. It is estimated that around 25% of train derailments are due to track geometry deterioration, causing on average 18 derailment per year in Europe with an associated economic loss of 32M€, not considering the potential human losses.
To solve this situation, ACCISA has developed DINTRA sleepers, and innovative solution capable of increasing significantly track lateral resistance. Reduction of track maintenance and renewal cost and track buckle events and derailments due to track misalignment will be experienced. DINTRA sleepers have a low implementation cost and no need of extra calculation or new equipment for their implementation.
Our overall objective with the present project is to industrialize the production process of DINTRA sleeper to introduce them into the international market through the construction of three advanced demonstration element in the most complex and demanding conditions.
When implementing DINTRA sleepers, railway infrastructure managers will save over 978M€ in track maintenance and renewal cost during the life span of the product (40 years), while only investing 53.7M€. DINTRA sleepers will lead to 13.7M€ of benefits for ACCISA by the 5th year.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
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CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques.
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Programme(s)
- H2020-EU.3.4. - SOCIETAL CHALLENGES - Smart, Green And Integrated Transport Main Programme
- H2020-EU.2.1.1. - INDUSTRIAL LEADERSHIP - Leadership in enabling and industrial technologies - Information and Communication Technologies (ICT)
- H2020-EU.2.3.1. - Mainstreaming SME support, especially through a dedicated instrument
Topic(s)
Funding Scheme
SME-2 - SME instrument phase 2Coordinator
39408 LOS CORRALES DE BUELNA
Spain
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.