voestalpine is one of the world's leading steel and technology conglomerates, and a global market leader in railway infrastructure systems. Through its subsidiary, voestalpine Railway Systems GmbH, the company contributes components, system expertise, simulation, and digitalization capabilities to the Rail4Future consortium. Dr. Stephan Scheriau provides insights into current research, his project experiences, and the potential through digitalization. He oversees the "Reliable Railway Tracks" division within Rail4Future.
Optimizing through Digitalization
The European railway sector holds economic, strategic, and ecological significance for the transportation industry. To handle future capacity increases, the availability and robustness of the rail system must be further optimized. Dr. Scheriau explains, "To lead this socially highly relevant sector towards a green, adaptable, and competitive future, an essential digital evolution is needed. Research within Rail4Future aims to support this through the development of a novel, fully virtual validation platform for simulations of entire rail lines."
Rail4Future as a Beacon Project
Dr. Scheriau highlights Rail4Future's innovative research approach, which fosters a deep understanding of the railway system by analyzing interdependencies among components, subsystems, and constitutive structures. "This will enable the virtual representation of innovative infrastructure components, operational scenarios, novel rail vehicles, etc., and their interdependencies within the overall system context," explains Dr. Scheriau.
Rail4Future is seen as a beacon project, realizing and enabling cross-domain research of this magnitude for the first time. Effective collaboration with operators, rolling stock manufacturers, and scientific experts is crucial. The prevalent spirit of cooperation and innovation, along with the strong motivation of partners involved, forms a valuable foundation for this research.
Digitalization in Action
As mentioned earlier, voestalpine Railway Systems GmbH contributes components, system expertise, simulations, and digitalization capabilities to the project. Dr. Scheriau presents three specific examples of what digitalization can achieve:
"Using multi-body simulations and advanced damage models, a framework for predicting track behavior concerning wear, rolling contact fatigue, and track alignment has been created and validated for entire track sections." Data processing from these calculations already takes place within the "Simulation Platform for Railway Systems," an area within the project.
For heavily loaded components in switches, such as the "heart piece" and "tongue rail," a model was developed to predict profile changes. "To capture changes due to wear and plasticization for various materials, extensive laboratory tests were conducted on 'heart pieces.' The result is a material model developed for each specific material, which is used in simulations to predict changes in condition," explains Dr. Scheriau.
The interaction between vehicle and track is a highly complex research area. It involves simulating the interaction at the wheel-rail contact interface. "The developed model can depict complex stresses on track components and calculate corresponding vehicle reactions. The model deepens the system understanding and accurately represents the complexity in the vehicle-track interaction," Dr. Scheriau adds.
Vision of "Digitally Supported Rail Systems"
Dr. Scheriau firmly believes that the rail system will be even more digitized in the future than it is today. "Our vision describes digitally supported rail systems that independently provide operators with data about their condition. This can significantly simplify maintenance processes and contribute to increased track availability. Furthermore, the ongoing costs of railway operations should decrease in the medium to long term, while simultaneously increasing utilization."
About voestalpine
voestalpine is a globally leading steel and technology group with a unique combination of materials and processing expertise. voestalpine, which operates globally, has around 500 Group companies and locations in more than 50 countries on all five continents. It has been listed on the Vienna Stock Exchange since 1995. With its premium products and system solutions, voestalpine is a leading partner to the automotive and consumer goods industries, as well as to the aerospace and oil & natural gas industries. The company is also the global market leader in railway systems, tool steel, and special sections. voestalpine is committed to the global climate goals and has a clear plan for decarbonizing steel production with its greentec steel program.