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Research Results

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Railroad Right-of-Way Vehicle Incursion Prevention Research

The Federal Railroad Administration’s (FRA) Office of Research, Development and Technology (RD&T) sponsored research conducted by the John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (Volpe Center), to evaluate the effectiveness of engineering treatments to deter vehicles from turning...

Understanding the Splitting and Bursting Failure of Concrete Crossties

Under the sponsorship of the Federal Railroad Administration, finite element (FE) analyses were conducted at the Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (Volpe Center) between 2016 and 2017 to understand the contributing factors to the concrete tie splitting/bursting failure mode. This was...

Ballast Degradation Under Heavy Axle Load Trains at the Western Mega Site

Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI) and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC), in conjunction with Union Pacific Railroad (UP), investigated ballast performance under 36-ton heavy axle load (HAL) traffic near Ogallala, NE, at the western mega site from 2010–2015. Periodic...

High-Speed Rail Learning System: Education and Training Web Portal

The United States has begun moving towards developing a High-Speed Rail (HSR) network. However, the necessary workforce and expertise for planning, design, construction, and operations of the nascent HSR system are currently underdeveloped. The project team from Michigan Technological University...

Feasibility of Track Energy Metric

Identifying track locations with rapid degradation potential and derailment risks due to structural failure is important for the railroad industry. Among the tools used to identify degradation are Track Quality Indexes (TQIs), a track geometry-based metric to characterize overall track quality....

Full-Scale Shell Impact of a DOT-105 Tank Car

On April 27, 2016, FRA conducted a full-scale shell impact test of a DOT105A500W (DOT-105) tank car at the Transportation Technology Center (TTC) in Pueblo, CO. The shell of the car was struck at its mid-length by a 297,000 pound ram car equipped with a 12-inch by 12-inch impactor.

Impact Test of a Diesel Multiple Unit Fuel Tank

On June 28, 2016, the Federal Railroad Administration’s (FRA) Office of Research, Development and Technology performed a dynamic impact test of a fuel tank from a Diesel Multiple Unit (DMU) rail vehicle with support from the Department of Transportation’s John A. Volpe National Transportation...