Rail Industry Focus

Rail Innovation 2012

The Rail Innovations 2012 conference highlighted exciting new opportunities in research and development; Kate Ashley reports.

Innovation is vital to improvement across the rail industry, yet risk can hold back investment for such research.

RTM attended the fourth Rail Innovations conference, held at the University of Birmingham on September 12, to find out more about current and prospective research projects, as well as their impact on the industry and available funding streams.

Speakers included Steve Yianni, technical director at Network Rail; Professor Chris Baker from the University of Birmingham; David Clarke, deputy director, rail technical at the DfT; Daniel Ruiz, project manager for the Transport Systems Catapult at the Technology Strategy Board; and Professor Andy Doherty from Network Rail.

University researchers from Birmingham, Sheffield, Nottingham and Southampton shared their individual areas of research, and a keynote address was given by Peter Chivers, chief executive at the National Composites Centre, on the High Value Manufacturing (HVM) catapult.

The event included a tour of the University of Birmingham’s laboratories, where their rail research is carried out, and a chance to see the hydrogen-powered loco a team of graduates built for the IMechE’s Railway Challenge this summer (see the August/September 2012 edition of RTM for more).

The innovation gap

Clarke introduced the new enabling innovation team (EIT), which aims to identify the innovation gap, improve capacity and the customer experience, and reduce carbon and costs.

The TSLG is addressing this gap by identifying barriers to innovation, such as a lack of crosssystem thinking, working across organisation boundaries, risk aversion in the industry and a need for structure and leadership to encourage innovation.

An innovation fund has been created and will launch from October/November this year, with pilot funding of £16.6m for 2012/13. The EIT has industry backing from the Rail Delivery Group, TSLG and RSSB to de-risk innovation by linking solutions to challenges and looking beyond the rail sector for innovation.

The fund is now open for expressions of interest for projects that have a benefit to the GB railway and can benefit the economy – for more information see www.futurerailway. org/pages/RailInnovationTeam.aspx

Transport systems catapult

Ruiz described the new Transport Systems Catapult (TSC), intended to bridge the innovation gap at the higher level. The TSC will provide a centre for excellence which brings together organisations and breaks down barriers, to improve transport across the UK, he said.

It will provide a testbed for solutions that can then be taken abroad, he explained, and highlighted how technology and processes can enable efficient movement of people and goods.

The TSC has a multiple role to think, stimulate, lead organisations and facilitate, establish, grow and adapt multimodal partnerships. The catapult is due to launch next year and will strive to establish an international reputation by publishing white papers, taking data through to intelligence, add value and ramp up projects, Ruiz added. It will be “the goto place for mobility”, and key to enhancing existing centres of excellence.

The initial focus of the TSC will be on the following four areas: data and the national transport systems model, capacity and positioning, healthy vehicles and healthy infrastructure, and inter-connected systems.

Joint Technology Initiative

Prof Doherty discussed the Shift2Rail joint technology initiative (JTI), developed by the European Rail Research Advisory Council (ERRAC).

The JTI has a seven-year contract with workstreams that will focus on trains, train control, infrastructure, information technology and freight. These will be developed and improved in the autumn to create lighter, faster and cheaper trains, with assured higher brake rates.

Advances around automation raise questions about whether we need a driver in the cab and whether it is possible to auto-couple and decouple carriages on the move, Prof Doherty suggested. To read more about the debate on driverless trains, see page 52.

Other work will include new track design and intelligent asset management, as well as ticketing, journey planning and faster and lighter freight. A cross-system approach would use foresight to identify how potential solutions will change the expected future railway, he concluded.

University partnerships

The conference also saw university rail research centres present their current work and explain how this could be applied to industry challenges.

Prof Clive Roberts, from the University of Birmingham’s Centre for Railway Research and Education, described their focus on themes such as condition monitoring, traffic management and rail capacity.

Currently funded projects include energy data fusion for improved network energy efficiency management, visualisation of train delay impact data in order to improve decision making, winter preparation, conductor shoe monitoring, Thameslink traffic management, and the environmental impact of electrification.

Dr David Fletcher, director of the Rail Innovation and Technology Centre (RITC) at the University of Sheffield, spoke about ‘intelligent rail’ infrastructure, detection, communications, and materials.

The centre has been working on improving insulated rail joint design, which is currently responsible for a disproportionate amount of failures. Dr Fletcher highlighted the use of recycled composite sleepers and alternatives such as plastic, to be installed as a test this winter.

Prof John Andrews of the University of Nottingham spoke about asset management and the need to achieve minimal life cycle costs, safe and reliable services, and to develop the “next generation” of asset management tools.

Work was ongoing on how assets degrade and to create predictive models to show the chance of an asset being in a certain state. This could lead to decision support and give indications for how long interventions would be effective.

At the University of Nottingham’s Centre for Rail Human Factors, Prof Sarah Sharples discussed how people and performance link with equipment and interfaces with organisations and systems.

She emphasised the importance of designing technology to make it work for people, and using intelligent systems to understand how much an individual member of rail staff can deal with in the real world.

Prof Sharples concluded with the need to “remember that humans are at the heart of the system”.

Prof William Powrie from the University of Southampton, a frequent contributor to RTM, described research into human factors, noise and vibration, and future infrastructure systems. This involved remote video monitoring, ballast migration, measuring the movement of a sleeper on a curve, earthworks monitoring, and embankments shrinking and swelling.

Finally Dr Tanya McMallum, senior policy and relationship manager at the RSSB, discussed how the RRUKA is harnessing academic excellence, providing a bridge between universities and industry.

Concept to commercialisation

Chivers explained how technology could be taken from concept to commercialisation through the HVM Catapult.

The HVM consortium, made up of seven centres, provides UK business with access to technology and expertise, and a critical mass of activity. Chivers highlighted the need for skills to make use of new technology and implement innovation.

He added that business-funded projects could be used to accelerate technology to commercialisation and called for sustained public funding to enable the UK to transform innovative ideas into products.

We can do more

Yianni told RTM: “We are trying to be very careful to target our activities to what we’re trying to achieve as a business. So that we’re not just working on technology for technology’s sake, we are dealing with real business problems and there is a pull from the business to work on various things. The universities have got a wealth of knowledge and experience and capability that this demonstrates that we are tapping into and I think we can do more.”

He discussed the importance of securing different sources of income for research and innovation technology for the future and said: “As we look forward now to the next five years or so, we have a horizon where we have visibility of where those funding streams are coming from, so that’s really helpful. 

The conference is getting bigger each year he said, and added that it was positive to see other conferences emerging in this space, including the RRUKA annual conference, and that they must coordinate their work together.

Yianni concluded: “It demonstrates there is a lot of activity and a lot of excitement in this area.”

Tell us what you think – have your say below or email us directly at [email protected]