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Between September 2018 and November 2021, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) sponsored a research team from Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (TTCI), now MxV Rail, to investigate and address areas of Reliability, Availability, and Maintainability (RAM) that are critical to the long-...
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) contracted a research team from TTCI (now MxV Rail) to assess the potential use of multi-band and directional antennas to meet the current and future wireless communication needs of the U.S. railroad industry. FRA supported this project due to the high...
The Federal Railroad Administration sponsored a research team fromEngineering Services, Inc. to perform an analysis of the effectiveness of the thermalprotection system on a DOT-117 rail car as a fire protection measure. This research wascarried out between February 2022 and March 2023 at...
Vertical split rims (VSRs) are one of the leading causes for wheel removals in North American freight rail service. The Federal Railroad Administration funded a research effort in which a group of researchers and subject matter experts explored a better understanding of VSRs using finite element...
The Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) sponsored an all-inclusive parametric study using NUCARS to assess vehicle performance of five vehicle types over analytically-defined track perturbations. The research team performed the vehicle performance assessment using criteria from both the...
States of reduced operator alertness, such as fatigue and inattention, are well-known factors contributing to railway accidents and safety incidents. However, more effective solutions are needed to mitigate their impact. Driver state monitoring (DSM) systems can potentially play a mitigatory...
In this research, the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) sponsored a team from the University of Delaware to develop a multidimensional, time-based Track Safety and Quality Index (TSQI) for assessing and monitoring the condition of railway tracks. The index captures the temporal dependencies...
Between April 2021 and April 2023, the Federal Railroad Administration sponsored a research team from The Pennsylvania State University to conduct a study on optimizing tamping maintenance. In this report, researchers examine the impact of various tamping parameters on railway ballast...
This research builds upon previous FRA-funded studies using the LRAIL 3D laser triangulation scanning system and Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNNs) to identify track health attributes. The focus lies on developing technology-agnostic methodologies for processing LRAIL data, catering to...
The objective of this project was to investigate the feasibility of Raman and fluorescence piezo-spectroscopy as a mobile method to measure the absolute stress in rail. This study identified Raman and fluorescence-sensitive oxides on the rail surface that can be used as an in-situ passive sensor...