DeltaRail Wins National Rail Award
01 January 2008 14:11
DeltaRail is delighted to announce that it has won a National Rail Award, jointly with Serco Assurance, Network Rail and RSSB, for a Stage 1 project to develop the Vehicle Track Interaction Strategic Model (VTISM). Presentations were made at the National Rail Awards at the Grosvenor House Hotel, on 5th September 2007.
VTISM is a software tool that links inputs such as track and vehicle characteristics, and asset management strategies, to outputs such as track component life and infrastructure costs. This enables substantial savings to be made on the railway by optimising maintenance and predicting the impact of changes to subsystems on the vehicle-track system.
The VTISM software model represents a breakthrough in the understanding of the railway system. It enables the industry to quantify the impact of changes in one part of the vehicle-track system on the whole system.
The rail industry can now evaluate and quantify the economic impact of options for a range of issues including:
Improving the configuration of existing vehicle fleets such as changing wheel profile and the associated impact on track maintenance costs.
Configuration of new train fleets on a route, considering axle load distribution and suspension characteristics.
Quantifying the influence of track component characteristics or track geometry standards and maintenance methods on life cycle costs.
In short the software is helping the industry make the right decisions for the future configuration of the Railway in order to maximise performance and reduce whole system life cycle costs.
The key technical achievements of the VTISM project team include:
Linking vehicle dynamic modelling (VAMPIRE) to the Network Rail track Strategic Planning Application (T-SPA), which models track maintenance and renewal costs, providing an integrated VTISM application on a single computer.
Modelling rail Rolling Contact Fatigue (RCF) and wear. Further developing the Whole Life Rail Model to calculate side wear as well as RCF and incorporating it into the VTISM software to give integrated rail renewal prediction. Providing estimates of costs and benefits from changes in the whole VTI system.
Further developing maintenance and renewal intervention criteria to give accurate simulation of track costs.
For more information on this company:
DeltaRail Group - Rail Consultancy, Engineering Systems and Advanced Asset Management
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