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Technical Reports

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Needs Assessment—Railroad Test Track Siding Options for High Speed Testing

This report presents the results and findings from a study titled “Needs Assessment—Railroad Test Track (RTT) Siding Options for High Speed Testing.” This study was conducted to (1) determine potential capabilities that the proposed siding test track for the Transportation Technology Center, Inc. (...

Robust Anomaly Detection for Vision-Based Inspection of Railway Components

The Computer Vision Laboratory at the University of Maryland has completed a two-year research project in which it developed a library of tools and algorithms that are used to inspect railway tracks with machine vision technology. This technology has been integrated into a distributed computing...

Rail Passenger Vehicle Truck Design Methodology

A procedure for the selection of rail passenger truck design parameters to meet dynamic performance indices has been developed. The procedure is based upon partitioning the design task into three trade-off studies: (1) a vertical ride quality-secondary stroke trade-off, (2) a lateral ride...

The Non-Steady Outflow of Propane Vapor from a Railroad Tank Car

This report discusses the venting of vapors from rail tank cars. Two particular problem areas are addressed, namely the non-steady character of the flow in the final blow-down stage and the influence of real gas effects on flow predictions. Equations are developed with which the non-steady mass...

Statistical Representations of Track Geometry Volume II - Appendixes

This volume contains some of the more detailed data and analyses to support the results and conclusions reached in Volume I of this report. It is divided into appendixes lettered A through J. Appendix A defines a procedure for evaluating the statistical parameters from field-collected track-...

Fire Behavior of Transformer Dielectric Insulating Fluids

This report presents results for the fire behavior of pure and askarel-contaminated Fluids which are candidates for use as railroad transformer dielectric insulating fluids. In the study a hydrocarbon and a dimethyl-siloxane fluid were examined. The fire behavior of the fluids was examined on...