joint research and testing of innovative grinding applications - speno ...

Wolfgang Schoech
Speno International SA
New Rail Maintenance Trends In Europe
Anti-Headcheck-Profiles and Preventive Cyclical Grinding
system. The system measures the variation of
an electric field caused by the cracks. Thus,
damage depth, which is the top layer of the rail
head surface that needs to be removed,
depends on crack inclination and orientation.
[6]
Quite a number of modifications on the
recording trolley were required to assure
correct, high precision guiding of the probes
closely over the surface, independent of the
shape and wear situation of the rail. Equally
laborious was the development of an
appropriate software package allowing for
online interpretation of the data.
Respective activities are under way in
Australia.
6. DEVELOPMENT OF GRINDING
STANDARDS –
The “INNOTRACK” project
In Europe an international research project
funded by the European Commission on
innovative maintenance practices for railway
infrastructure (“Innotrack”) has been
terminated recently. Its results are at present
disseminated to help infrastructure managers
in their task of economical maintenance of
heavy duty tracks.
This project also can be seen as a joint
research work between infrastructure
managers and contractors. First of all regular
meetings of the working groups assured an
intense exchange of knowledge and
experience. Some specific test projects have
been undertaken in laboratories by universities
and research institutions. Other work packages
concentrated on applied research.
Figure 9: Eddy-current-system on a rail grinder
Figure 10: Example head check recording
Based on the experiences made a series of
systems is now in use with selected grinding
machines. Their continuous use under routine
operational conditions has helped to further
develop and fine-tune the system as well as to
explore the limits. Of course, that development
will never have a definite end.
So far quite satisfactory results have been
made. Due to the European railway conditions,
i.e. mixed traffic on conventional lines using
standard steel grades (R260) it will be
interesting to see the performance of this socalled
“HC-Grinding-Scanner” under different
conditions, such as heavy haul operations.
Results of such individual tests have been
published and discussed earlier on. Due to the
big number of project partners (well over thirty)
and their previous works and experiences, the
project setup allowed to complement, confirm
and finetune the various conclusions. As the
project moved on, a big number of
deliverables, i.e. technical documents has
been published.
Within subproject SP5 the working group WP
4.5 - originally named “Validation of new
maintenance processes”, later referred to as
“Rail Maintenance”, looked into the rail sector.
Besides rail lubrication and friction
modification, rail reprofiling - taking into
account optimal steel grade selection - was the
main topic addressed.
This working group was ordered to produce
four documents:
“Review of Present Maintenance Situation”
“Target Profiles for Grinding”
“Grinding strategies”
“Lubrication and Friction Management”
Finally a summary document entitled
“Guidelines for management of rail grinding”,
containing the most important results has been
produced and published. [7]
AusRAIL PLUS 2011
22 – 24 November 2011, Brisbane