Study on the wear and rolling contact fatigue behavior of rail steel grades using a twin disc laboratory equipment

The wear resistance and the rolling contact fatigue (RCF) behaviour of different rail steel grades versus a railway wheel steel is analysed in this work. For this purpose, a twin-disc test was setup, in order to replicate the in-service damage suffered by the rails due to the contact pressure appearing in the rail and to analyse the wear and RCF behaviour of the rail steel in a quick and efficient way. Different rail steel grades have been studied under different test conditions and the influence of the applied load and the sliding rate on the wear and RCF behaviour of these materials has been analysed. At the end of the tests, the specimen mass loss was determined and degradation phenomena assessed by metallographic characterization. The nature, shape and size of the cracks were analysed and compared to those obtained in the tests carried out with the same materials at a pilot plant scale. It has been demonstrated that the proposed Twin-Disc tests are able to predict the behaviour of the different steel grades in rail-wheel systems in a quick and easy way.The authors acknowledge the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad for financing IPT-2012-0320-420000 project, in whose context this work was performed

Detection of high erosion risk areas and their incorporation into environmental impact assessment

Life Cycle Assessment (LCA) is normally used independently of the physical and temporal location of the product, process or service under analysis. This makes LCA results more easily comparable and globally accepted. At the same time, it has drawbacks though, e.g. land use will have the same impact regardless of location. However, the use of certain terrains in high erosion risk areas as compared to others in low erosion risk areas will have a different impact on the ecosystem. The availability of airborne Light Detection and Ranging (LiDAR) data (ALS) allows a quick and accurate morphogeometric analysis of any terrain. For this reason, this article offers a methodology, based on Revised Universal Soil Loss Equation (RUSLE) method and airborne LiDAR data, for the straightforward detection of zones with high vulnerability to erosion problems. Based on these local erosion risk data, a method is developed to assess the environmental impact of land use, based on its location. In this way, the LCA methodology is incorporated to gather local data, dependent on the specific location of the activity under analysis. The methodology developed has been applied, as a case study, to a specific municipality in the high mountains of the Autonomous Community of La Rioja (Spain)

Technical Inspections of Agricultural Machinery and Their Influence on Environmental Impact

On 20 May 2018, Royal Decree 920/2017, establishing the minimum requirements for the regime of the vehicle technical inspection (ITV in Spanish) to circulate on public roads, entered into force. The new regulations are aimed at ensuring that vehicles in general, and agricultural vehicles in particular, are in proper condition from the point of view of safety and environment. In La Rioja, detailed data are available on the technical inspections performed on agricultural machinery for the last 15 years (2005–2020). The aim of this paper is to analyze the possible effects of technical inspections of agricultural vehicles on their environmental impact. Emissions regulations for this type of vehicle have evolved over the last few years, and as a result, new tractors have better environmental performance. Considering that serious defects detected in vehicle technical inspections can lead the owner to replace the vehicle with a new one, there is a potential reduction in the environmental impact associated with ITVs, as studied in this paper