- Start: 01/10/2024
- End: 31/03/2027
Railway crossings degrade significantly faster than plain line track, with lifespans commonly lasting less than 5 years despite their design lives typically being 15 years. This results in billions of Euros being spent on unplanned corrective maintenance, crossing renewals, and delay-minutes, which would not occur if they could be better managed to reach their design lives.
XCROSS will develop a suite of integrated disruptive technologies which combine to provide a technological process for the monitoring, inspection, and maintenance intervention of crossing surface profiles. To achieve these objectives, new crossing inspection techniques will be developed using 3D laser scanning technology and computer vision to allow for fast, repeatable, and high-accuracy crossing measurement. These 3D scans will then be used to create digital twins (DT) of the crossing, embedded with advanced wheel-rail interaction calculation algorithms.
Considering these wheel forces and also on-site practical maintenance constraints, the digital twin will use optimisation strategies to calculate the optimal geometry profile achievable via on-site welding and grinding techniques in terms of lifecycle cost. Then, to enable the practical implementation of the calculated optimum crossing profile geometries, Augmented Reality (AR) and 3D printing techniques will be developed to provide visualisation guides for on-site welding and grinding. These technologies will allow the maintenance engineers to see their welding and grinding progress "live," thus enabling a step-change in the quality control of crossing interventions. Lastly, an early warning system will also be developed to act as the initial trigger for the deployment of the 3D scanning, AR, and 3D printing. This system will be vital for detecting the early signs of degradation and, thus, initiating the deployment of the new maintenance process before the onset of irreparable degradation.
AIMEN will be responsible for the development and manufacturing of a physical visualization tool using 3D printing, capable of performing accurate in-situ measurements. This will allow workers to quickly assess the wear level of the crossing rails and apply the appropriate maintenance measures to the worn areas. The following activities will be carried out:
- Develop a technical specification for rail visualization tools produced through 3D printing that help maintain railway crossings at their optimal quality.
- Design and develop the visualization tools using 3D printing in collaboration with the University of Leeds.
- Produce the prototypes of the visualization tools using 3D printing.
- Sectors: Railway
- Financing programme: HORIZON EUROPE
- R&D&i: 3D Printing, Integrated monitoring and control systems, Laser assisted processing
- Leader: Technische Universiteit Delft (TUD)
- Partners: AIMEN Centro Tecnológico, EURNEX, TECHNISCHE UNIVERSITAET DRESDEN, Evopro Innovation, ProRail, Union Internationale des Chemins de fer, TXT e-tech srl, Rotterdamse Elektrische Tram (RET)
- Acronym: XCROSS
- Ambit: International
- Web: https://xcross-rail.eu/
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