C4R Project Increases Rail Capacity without Laying Down New Tracks

AbstractRail freight transport is today characterized by inefficiencies in the use of the existing infrastructure while the growing demand is activated by giant containers vessels handling thousands of units in the ports. Lack of industrialization prevents gaining from economies of scale while bottlenecks penalize the optimization of the network use. The rail freight transport market share remains low whereas for environmental reasons immediate progress is required. Capacity4Rail intends to analyze the key factors enabling rail freight market share to increase on the most promising segments.The innovations planned by Capacity4Rail are concentrated on three macro-areas from the concept to simulations and tests: wagon structure design, wagon equipment technology and train maneuverability.For the wagon structure, the project focuses on the new design giving direct efficiency: better payload, less deadweight, extended usable length, maintenance cost reduction. With a reduced weight due to the use of new materials the design evolution allows to make the best use of the gauge profile.For the wagon equipment technology a continuous electric line carrying a bus of information all along the train and bringing energy to the wagon allows placing various sensors increasing safety and reliability. With this new wagon connectivity, predictive maintenance is developed but also accurate real time information are available for the customers enhancing the planning efficiency of the next supply chain evolution. The wagons are equipped with an electric command of the pneumatic brakes for an instant and simultaneous braking and releasing. The brakes of all wagons reduces drastically the longitudinal forces in the couplings enabling progressive lengthening of the train reducing operational costs and network capacity consumption per ton transported.For the train, this new braking system improves its maneuverability, giving access to better paths aiming to reduce the wear of the wheels created by the new brake composite shoes imposed for noise reduction.All these potential progress are researched and checked in terms of affordability taking into account not only the global added value created but an equitable reward of all the stakeholders having invested for such innovations. Proposed roadmaps incorporate viable business models for a progressive implementation on the basis of simulations. A virtuous circle is initiated improving the use of assets, reducing noise, informing customers more efficiently, reducing maintenance and operational costs in an affordable way

Small Scale Structure Formation in Chameleon Cosmology

Chameleon fields are scalar fields whose mass depends on the ambient matter density. We investigate the effects of these fields on the growth of density perturbations on sub-galactic scales and the formation of the first dark matter halos. Density perturbations on comoving scales $R < 1 {\rm pc}$ go non--linear and collapse to form structure much earlier than in standard $\Lambda$CDM cosmology. The resulting mini-halos are hence more dense and resilient to disruption. We therefore expect (provided that the density perturbations on these scales have not been erased by damping processes) that the dark matter distribution on small scales would be more clumpy in chameleon cosmology than in the $\Lambda$CDM model.Comment: 13 pages, 4 figure

C4R D 22.1 Novel Rail Freight Vehicles (intermediate)

WP22 is aiming to propose solutions to enhance the efficiency of Rail Freight transport. At the beginning a large forwarder operating long distance combined trains across Europe and a Car carrier operating a fleet of more than 3500 wagons involved in multimodal logistics across Europe and being also an ECM for other wagon operators have expressed their most urgent needs to increase their efficiency by reducing their operating costs while improving the quality of service. The tools that this work package wanted to develop was to increase the usable length of a standard train with new wagon designs having a lower LCC. At the same time improving the asset rotation with synchronous braking of all wagons could have reduced the wear and tear of the new composite brake blocks aiming at reducing noise. Several designs have been studied for car carrier wagons reaching 5 bodies with 6 axels for an overall length of around 62m. For container traffics two ideas have been studied. The first one was to introduce in a standard train composed of wagons capable to carry 40’ containers or 40’ plus 20’ containers a partial flexibility to transport a third container type of 45’ without lengthening the trains and with minimal changes on the wagons. The second idea studied was a new design of a 5 bodies wagon with 6 bogies for an overall length of around 72m. This solution was aiming to reduce the number of bogies and hence the maintenance cost. A third idea was to develop the same concept for transport of crane-able semitrailers with a 4 bodies wagon with 6 bogies for an overall length of around 67M. Each of these solutions were studied successfully in term of stability with the mathematical programs of KTH. The cost of these new designs were estimated by NTnetAB and the operational efficiencies calculated when possible or estimated according to expert experience. The impact in terms of temperature reduction with synchronous braking showed a significant decrease on the test benches of Knorr Bremse. Unfortunately new braking methodologies by applying successively strong braking followed by a release have reduced the temperature reached by the blocks and the wheel treads in a zone where the impact of the synchronous braking would not bring significant maintenance cost reduction and damage reduction. For the new wagon designs the cost benefit analysis show interesting progress for the car carrier wagon and the container wagon but not for the pocket wagons. The flexibility of putting a third of the number of container with a length of 45’ without lengthening the train may be very promising. Finally an extremely promising field is to significantly reduce the preparation time before the departure of the train with the introduction of an EOT (End of Train) device. This intermediate deliverable will be completed in the next issue with the introduction of these new designs on the Network and with a possible roadmap to mobilize investors to create these new wagons.Capacity4Rai

C4R D 2.2.2 Novel Rail Freight Vehicles (Final)

Rapporten ger förslag på innovationer gällande utveckling av godsvagnar för ökad kapacitet och flexibilitet syftande till ökad konkurrenskraft för godstrafik på järnväg.Capacity4Rai

Constitution assistée d'un parcours de formation s'appuyant sur les outils du web sémantique et l'analyse de corpus

National audienceDans cette recherche nous voulons structurer différentes tech- niques intégrées dans le domaine des Humanités Numériques. Notre but est d’obtenir des connaissances expertes à partir de corpus de textes ou d’entretien. Pour cela, nous ferons appel à des outils de traitement automatique du langage naturel pour alimenter un réseau lexical en français. Des techniques de l’intelligence artificielle seront appliquées. Ainsi nous construirons des modèles pour décrire les connaissances didactiques d’une discipline donnée et les parcours d’apprentissages associés à une typologie d’apprenants. Un outil graphique sera proposé à l’enseignant ou à l’apprenant pour faciliter la construction de ces parcours

Small random perturbation of a classical mean field model

The thermodynamic limit of a classical mean field system perturbed by a small Sherrington-Kirkpatrick term is derived. It is proved to exhibit behaviors that may strongly differ from the usual ones. Examples are given showing that every situation is likely to occur. The main tools that are used are large deviation techniques and conditioning.Mean field models Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model Metastate

The Marathon Handbook

After NEWOPERA Project the precursor of the European Rail Network for Competitive Freight, TIGER and TIGER DEMO introducing new techniques and technologies for industrializing Rail Freight Transportation to/from the Sea Ports to the inland Dry Ports, the MARATHON Project with its 1500m trains opened up a completely new horizon on European Rail Freight scenario by operating a new generation of longer, faster and heavier trains. The leadership of the MARATHON Project during the various stages of its development, the challenges, the problem solving, the technological achievements, the discoveries up to the train physical testing, delivered emotions and sense of achievement for having proved in a real market environment a technological conquest capable of changing the European rail Freight commercial game. This Hand Book is dedicated to us the MARATHON Project initiator, to all the Project partners and the European Commission for having believed in this innovative and challenging initiative and for bringing it to a positive conclusion. The market exploitation results for Rail Freight will be far reaching contributing to the fulfillment of the EU Commission ambitious European Mobility policies. A special recognition is due to the technology providers for developing the MARATHON Kit, the two equipment locomotive manufacturers and the French partners who were fundamental in organizing the operational theatre for testing these MARATHON trains. The MARATHON trains technological discoveries open up new horizon for Rail Intermodality and Rail Freight in general contributing to keep in EUROPE the Rail Global leadership.Maratho

Marathon2Operation, a Shift2Rail project for radio communication and simulation of train dynamics for distributed power within long trains

The paper reports the main objectives of the European research project Marathon2Operation (M2O). This project aims to define the best train configurations with distributed traction and communication via GSM-R radio technology, compared to longitudinal dynamics and to demonstrate their safety through a safety analysis independently assessed. The analysis involves trains with two up to four traction units. The trains analyzed are randomly composed, considering different types of wagons and different mass distributions along the train, to be representative of the operational reality. The first results of the project allow identifying some families of distributed traction trains (these are coupled trains) that have a behavior of longitudinal dynamics (also considering the degraded operation, i.e. with radio problems) similar to that of some trains currently running