La réponse dynamique d’un train roulant sur une voie réelle dépend de plusieurs paramètres. Certains d’entre eux ne peuvent pas être correctement identifiés et doivent être considérés comme incertains. L’objectif de cette thèse est la construction d’un modèle probabiliste de la fatigue du rail, en considérant la géométrie de la voie et l’usure des rails comme champs aléatoires modélisés en utilisant le développement de Karhunen-Loève. Ce dernier requiert le calcul des fonctions et des valeurs propres de l’opérateur de covariance pour la représentation modale du champ. Cette étape peut devenir très coûteuse si le domaine est beaucoup plus grand que la longueur de corrélation. Pour résoudre ce problème, une adaptation de la technique est proposée. Les distributions multivariées des coefficients de projection sont identifiées à l’aide d’un développement en Chaos Polynomiaux, qui est calibré sur des données de mesures. Le rayon de courbure, l’âge du rail et la vitesse opérationnelle du train induisent des effets non stationnaires qui doivent être pris en compte dans le modèle. La validation du modèle probabiliste des quantités d’entrée est faite en comparant des données de mesure des efforts de contact roue-rail avec les résultats des simulations. Une analyse de sensibilité globale est menée sur des quantités d’intérêts dynamiques pour quantifier l’impact des irrégularités aléatoires sur la dynamique du véhicule et l’initiation à fatigue du rail. / The dynamical response of a train rolling on a real track depends on several parameters. Most of them cannot be accurately identified and have to be considered as uncertain. The aim of this thesis is the construction of a probabilistic model of the rail fatigue life considering the track geometry and the rail wear as random fields modelled with the Karhunen-Loève expansion. This latter requires the modal decomposition of the covariance operator. This step can be very expensive if the domain if much larger than the correlation length. To deal with this issue, an adaptation of the KLE, consisting in splitting the domain in sub-domains where this modal decomposition and the sample generation can be comfortably computed, is proposed. A correlation between the KLE coefficients of each sub-domain is imposed to ensure the desired correlation structure. The multivariate distributions of the random projection coefficients are characterized using a Polynomial Chaos Expansion (PCE) calibrated on measurements data of the track irregularities. The curve radius, the rail age and the train operational velocity introduce nonstationary effects that have to be taken into account to model the track. A validation of the random models is therefore performed using a set of measurements of the wheel-rail contact forces.A global sensitivity analysis is performed on some dynamical quantities of interest in order to quantify the impact of the random fields on the vehicle dynamics and the rail fatigue initiation. Since this step is computationally expensive, a PCE-based meta-modelling technique is employed to estimate the fatigue index.

To investigate the wheel/rail contact impact forces at insulated rail joints (IRJs), a three-dimensional finite element model and strain gauged experiments are employed and reported in this thesis. The 3D wheel/rail contact-impact FE model adopts a two-stage analysis strategy in which the wheel-IRJ railhead contact is first established in the static analysis and the results transferred to dynamic analysis for impact simulations. The explicit FE method was employed in the dynamic analysis. The Lagrange Multiplier method and the Penalty method for contact constraint enforcement were adopted for the static and dynamic analyses respectively. The wheel/rail contact-impact in the vicinity of the end post is exhibited via numerical examples from the FE modelling. The wheel/rail contact impact mechanism is investigated. The strain gauged experiments which consist of a lab test and a field test are reported. The signature of the strain time series from the field test demonstrates a plausible record of the dynamic responses due to the wheel/rail contact impact. By using the experimental data, both the static and the dynamic FE models are validated. It is found that the stiffness discontinuity of the IRJ structure causes a running surface geometry discontinuity during the wheel passages which then causes the impact in the vicinity of the end post. Through a series of sensitivity studies of several IRJ design parameters, it is shown that the IRJ performance can be effectively improved with optimised design parameters.

High-speed passenger rail is seen by many in the U.S. transportation policy and planning communities as an ideal solution for fast, safe, and resource-efficient mobility in high-demand intercity corridors. To expand the body of knowledge for high-speed intercity passenger rail in the U.S., the overall goal of this dissertation was to better understand the demand for high-speed intercity passenger rail services in small- or medium-sized intermediate communities and improve planners' ability to estimate such demand through traveler surveys; specifically, the use of different experimental designs for stated preference questions and the use of images to describe hypothetical travel alternatives in traveler surveys. In pursuit of this goal, an Internet-based survey was distributed to residents of Waco and Temple, two communities located along the federally-designated South Central High-Speed Rail Corridor in Central Texas. A total of 1,160 surveys were obtained from residents of the two communities. Mixed logit travel mode choice models developed from the survey data revealed valuable findings that can inform demand estimates and the design of traveler surveys for high-speed intercity passenger rail planning activities. Based on the analysis presented in this dissertation, ridership estimates for new high-speed intercity passenger rail lines that are planned to serve intermediate communities should not assume that residents of these communities have similar characteristics and values. The d-efficient stated preference experimental design was found to provide a mode choice model with a better fit and greater significance on key policy variables than the adaptive design and therefore is recommended for use in future surveys. Finally, it is recommended that surveys should consider the use of images of proposed train services to aid respondent decision-making for stated preference questions, but only if the images used in the survey depict equipment that could be realistically deployed in the corridor.

This project is based on Artificial Intelligence (A.I) and Digital Image processing (I.P) for automatic condition monitoring of sleepers in the railway track. Rail inspection is a very important task in railway maintenance for traffic safety issues and in preventing dangerous situations. Monitoring railway track infrastructure is an important aspect in which the periodical inspection of rail rolling plane is required.Up to the present days the inspection of the railroad is operated manually by trained personnel. A human operator walks along the railway track searching for sleeper anomalies. This monitoring way is not more acceptable for its slowness and subjectivity. Hence, it is desired to automate such intuitive human skills for the development of more robust and reliable testing methods. Images of wooden sleepers have been used as data for my project. The aim of this project is to present a vision based technique for inspecting railway sleepers (wooden planks under the railway track) by automatic interpretation of Non Destructive Test (NDT) data using A.I. techniques in determining the results of inspection.

The motivation for this thesis work is the need for improving reliability of equipment and quality of service to railway passengers as well as a requirement for cost-effective and efficient condition maintenance management for rail transportation. This thesis work develops a fusion of various machine vision analysis methods to achieve high performance in automation of wooden rail track inspection.The condition monitoring in rail transport is done manually by a human operator where people rely on inference systems and assumptions to develop conclusions. The use of conditional monitoring allows maintenance to be scheduled, or other actions to be taken to avoid the consequences of failure, before the failure occurs. Manual or automated condition monitoring of materials in fields of public transportation like railway, aerial navigation, traffic safety, etc, where safety is of prior importance needs non-destructive testing (NDT).In general, wooden railway sleeper inspection is done manually by a human operator, by moving along the rail sleeper and gathering information by visual and sound analysis for examining the presence of cracks. Human inspectors working on lines visually inspect wooden rails to judge the quality of rail sleeper. In this project work the machine vision system is developed based on the manual visual analysis system, which uses digital cameras and image processing software to perform similar manual inspections. As the manual inspection requires much effort and is expected to be error prone sometimes and also appears difficult to discriminate even for a human operator by the frequent changes in inspected material. The machine vision system developed classifies the condition of material by examining individual pixels of images, processing them and attempting to develop conclusions with the assistance of knowledge bases and features.A pattern recognition approach is developed based on the methodological knowledge from manual procedure. The pattern recognition approach for this thesis work was developed and achieved by a non destructive testing method to identify the flaws in manually done condition monitoring of sleepers.In this method, a test vehicle is designed to capture sleeper images similar to visual inspection by human operator and the raw data for pattern recognition approach is provided from the captured images of the wooden sleepers. The data from the NDT method were further processed and appropriate features were extracted.The collection of data by the NDT method is to achieve high accuracy in reliable classification results. A key idea is to use the non supervised classifier based on the features extracted from the method to discriminate the condition of wooden sleepers in to either good or bad. Self organising map is used as classifier for the wooden sleeper classification.In order to achieve greater integration, the data collected by the machine vision system was made to interface with one another by a strategy called fusion. Data fusion was looked in at two different levels namely sensor-level fusion, feature- level fusion. As the goal was to reduce the accuracy of the human error on the rail sleeper classification as good or bad the results obtained by the feature-level fusion compared to that of the results of actual classification were satisfactory.

Safe, high speed, on time, high transport volume, minimum land use, low energy and low pollution are unique features of high-speed rail transport. In countries reaching a threshold level of economic development, traditional railway system will no longer satisfy the need of the mass in cross-township transport. As the cost of energy and demand for environmental protection escalates, high-speed rails have gradually surfaced as a competitive mode of transport in cross-township traveling. Furthermore, it is able to bring regional developments. However, high-speed rail transport is a new industry in Taiwan. There has been no hands-on experience in the passenger service. How then, through the development of marketing strategy and implementation, so as to promote the service quality and customer satisfaction, has been a primary operations objective of high-speed railways. This motivated the need to study the service marketing strategy in high-speed rail transport. The Taiwan High Speed Rail Corporation (THSRC) is the subject of this study. The 7P marketing mix of the service industry was the theoretical foundation. Historical data on the service and marketing strategies of high-speed railways in countries such as Japan, France and Germany were collected. Questions for conducting in-depth interviews with experts in high-speed railway were devised from the study of these historical data. In addition, a survey questionnaire was developed from the data collected via interviews. Passengers taking the Taiwan High Speed Rail were surveyed for statistical analysis. Finally, an appropriate service and marketing strategy was developed. The results show, the Taiwan High Speed Rail needs to first build a brand image of safety and credibility. It needs to schedule and allocate headways in line with its target passenger group and develop a comprehensive product strategy for its target customers. Having done that, it needs to propose competitive price strategies and promotion programs on corporate customers and travel agencies. Making use of the comprehensive mobile telephony coverage and internet network, and more convenient channels should be further developed. Furthermore, the THSRC needs to solve the problem of passenger transfers in station areas gradually. This is necessary to promote the overall service quality, satisfy divergent needs of the target market, and build up a recognized brand in high-speed railway transport. Finally, the recommendations made to THSRC were compared with service and marketing strategies in other countries. It is hoped that the results would be able to provide THSRC and any other countries planning to develop high-speed railway, some practical reference in planning their marketing strategies.

<p>Numerical procedures for reliable wheel and rail wear prediction are rare. Recent development of simulation techniques and computer power together with tribological knowledge do however suggest computer aided wear prediction as possible. The present objective is to devise a numerical procedure able to simulate profile evolution due to uniform wear sufficiently accurate for application to vehicle dynamics simulation. Such a tool should be useful for maintenance planning, optimisation of the railway system and its components as well as trouble-shooting. More specifically, the field of application may include estimation of reprofiling frequency, optimisation of wheel – rail profile match, optimisation of running gear suspension parameters, and recognition of unfavourable profile evolution influencing the dynamic response of the vehicle.</p><p>The research contribution accounted for in this thesis includes, besides a literature review, modelling of the wheel – rail interface, benchmarking against traditional methods, and validation with respect to full-scale measurements.</p><p>The first part addresses wheel – rail contact conditions in the context of wear simulation as well as tribological environment and tractive forces. The current approach includes Archard’s wear model with associated wear maps, vehicle dynamics simulation, and railway network definition. One objective is to be able to include variations in operation conditions in the set of simulations instead of using scaling factors. In particular the influence of disc braking and varying lubrication conditions have been investigated. Both environmental factors like moist and contamination and deliberate lubrication need to be considered. As part of the associated contact analysis the influence of tangential elastic deformation of the contacting surfaces has been investigated and found to be essential in case of partial slip contact conditions. The influence on the calculated wear of replacing the Hertzian contact by a non-elliptic semi-Hertzian method has been investigated, showing relocation of material loss towards increased profile curvature.</p><p>In the second part comparisons have been carried out with traditional methods, where the material loss is assumed to be directly related to the energy dissipated in the contact. Attention has been paid to the understanding of the principle differences between the investigated methods, comparing the distribution of friction energy, sliding velocity, and wear depth. As a prerequisite, contact conditions with dependence on wheelset guidance and curving performance as well as influence of tractive forces have been investigated.</p><p>In the final part validation of the developments related to wheel wear simulation is addressed. Disc braking has been included and a wear map for moist contact conditions based on recent tests has been drafted. Good agreement with measurements from the reference operation, is achieved. Further a procedure for simulation of rail wear and corresponding profile evolution has been formulated. A simulation set is selected defining the vehicles running on the track to be investigated, their operating conditions, and contact parameters. Trial calculations of a few curves show qualitatively good results in terms of profile shape development and difference in wear mechanisms between gauge corner and rail head. The wear rates related to traffic tonnage are however overestimated. The impact of the model improvements accounted for in the first part of the thesis has been investigated, indicating directions for further development.</p>

Current transportation methods within the Central Arizona region revolve primarily around automobiles. In order for the region to become more economically resilient and environmentally sustainable, alternative transportation methods must be considered. One such alternative that has shown great promise in other regions of the United States is rail transport. Rail transport, including commuter rail or high speed rail, has proven to not only be an effective alternative to automobile transport, but also as a more environmentally sustainable transportation option. The I-11 Super Corridor study, a part of the University of Arizona’s Sustainable City Project 2014, applied next generation urban planning design ideas to the planned Interstate 11 corridor, a major transportation artery that will connect Mexico and Canada. This study inspired this project’s focus on the concept of identifying suitable routes for new transportation infrastructure within the central and southern Arizona regions. Through the incorporation of commuter or high speed rail within central and southern Arizona, a more resilient regional economy and environment can be created. The previous I-11 Super Corridor study presented the incorporation of different regional factors, including population density and economic statistics, to determine suitable routes for future transportation corridors. This project integrates the utilization of specific local and regional data and advanced GIS analysis to determine suitable routes for new rail transport corridors within Maricopa, Pinal and Pima Counties.

This study provides a strategy from which Economy, Indiana may find structure for future improvement and growth, en route to establishing this Town as a model community for small, rural Indiana towns adjoining rails-to-trails networks. After conducting a visual inventory of the Town, significant physical design components were selected for analysis, including land use, circulation, streetscape, vegetation, buildings/structures, park area, open space/vacant land, and a surveyed historic district. The evidence suggests that even though most of Economy's original visual historic patterns and components still exist, they are in a continual decline. Using the Cardinal Greenway rails-to-trails project as a catalyst, the recommendations will assist the improvement of Economy's visual character, and take advantage of rails-to trails tourism as one means of revitalization. / Department of Landscape Architecture

Numerical procedures for reliable wheel and rail wear prediction are rare. Recent development of simulation techniques and computer power together with tribological knowledge do however suggest computer aided wear prediction as possible. The present objective is to devise a numerical procedure able to simulate profile evolution due to uniform wear sufficiently accurate for application to vehicle dynamics simulation. Such a tool should be useful for maintenance planning, optimisation of the railway system and its components as well as trouble-shooting. More specifically, the field of application may include estimation of reprofiling frequency, optimisation of wheel – rail profile match, optimisation of running gear suspension parameters, and recognition of unfavourable profile evolution influencing the dynamic response of the vehicle. The research contribution accounted for in this thesis includes, besides a literature review, modelling of the wheel – rail interface, benchmarking against traditional methods, and validation with respect to full-scale measurements. The first part addresses wheel – rail contact conditions in the context of wear simulation as well as tribological environment and tractive forces. The current approach includes Archard’s wear model with associated wear maps, vehicle dynamics simulation, and railway network definition. One objective is to be able to include variations in operation conditions in the set of simulations instead of using scaling factors. In particular the influence of disc braking and varying lubrication conditions have been investigated. Both environmental factors like moist and contamination and deliberate lubrication need to be considered. As part of the associated contact analysis the influence of tangential elastic deformation of the contacting surfaces has been investigated and found to be essential in case of partial slip contact conditions. The influence on the calculated wear of replacing the Hertzian contact by a non-elliptic semi-Hertzian method has been investigated, showing relocation of material loss towards increased profile curvature. In the second part comparisons have been carried out with traditional methods, where the material loss is assumed to be directly related to the energy dissipated in the contact. Attention has been paid to the understanding of the principle differences between the investigated methods, comparing the distribution of friction energy, sliding velocity, and wear depth. As a prerequisite, contact conditions with dependence on wheelset guidance and curving performance as well as influence of tractive forces have been investigated. In the final part validation of the developments related to wheel wear simulation is addressed. Disc braking has been included and a wear map for moist contact conditions based on recent tests has been drafted. Good agreement with measurements from the reference operation, is achieved. Further a procedure for simulation of rail wear and corresponding profile evolution has been formulated. A simulation set is selected defining the vehicles running on the track to be investigated, their operating conditions, and contact parameters. Trial calculations of a few curves show qualitatively good results in terms of profile shape development and difference in wear mechanisms between gauge corner and rail head. The wear rates related to traffic tonnage are however overestimated. The impact of the model improvements accounted for in the first part of the thesis has been investigated, indicating directions for further development. / QC 20110124