Loughborough University
Browse
REPOINT for Stephenson Conference - ID 0112 FINAL.pdf (480.61 kB)

Design, construction and operation of a REPOINT laboratory demonstrator

Download (480.61 kB)
conference contribution
posted on 2015-05-07, 08:58 authored by Sam Bemment, Roger Dixon, Roger Goodall, Christopher Ward, N. Wright
The REPOINT project, led by Loughborough University, has been active since March 2011. It seeks to improve the reliability, safety and maintainability of track switching technology, with the aim of increasing network capacity and lowering operating costs. To do this, the project is exploring combining mature concepts from other industries such as fault tolerance, line-replaceable units and passively safe design, with novel mechanical arrangements, in order to bring about a step change in performance. One design, based around a stub-switch arrangement, has showed particular promise and is the currently the subject of three patent applications covering the novel mode of operation. A laboratory-scale demonstrator of all key subsystems is currently under construction, under funding from the FutureRailway.org team. This is integrated with test and monitoring equipment, alongside a rapid-prototyping control system. This first-generation design will be used to prove the concept of operation and to develop the associated control and monitoring technology. The goal of this paper is to provide an overview of the REPOINT project to date, and the design and operation of the proposed novel REPOINT design. This paper firstly introduces the REPOINT project and highlights of the proposed novel design. It then discusses the simulation, modelling and design of the demonstrator rig, and the associated test and development equipment. The conclusions highlight the progress so far – on the REPOINT project and the Demonstrator rig - and comment upon potential next steps towards network deployment.

Funding

The authors wish to acknowledge the financial support provided by the United Kingdom EPSRC (Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council) and the UK RSSB (Railway Safety and Standards Board) in grant number EP/I010823/1, for the project titled ‘REPOINT: Redundantly engineered points for enhanced reliability and capacity of railway track switching’. The authors also wish to acknowledge the support of the UK’s EIT (Enabling Innovation Team), for providing follow-on research funding towards concept demonstrator design and construction (http://www.futurerailway.org/).

History

School

  • Mechanical, Electrical and Manufacturing Engineering

Published in

THE STEPHENSON CONFERENCE - RESEARCH FOR RAILWAYS

Citation

BEMMENT, S.D. ... et al., 2015. Design, construction and operation of a REPOINT laboratory demonstrator. IN: Proceedings of the Stephenson Conference - Research for Railways, Institution of Mechanical Engineers, London, 21 - 23 April 2015.

Publisher

© The Authors. Published by the Institution of Mechanical Engineers

Version

  • AM (Accepted Manuscript)

Publisher statement

This work is made available according to the conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) licence. Full details of this licence are available at: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/

Publication date

2015

Notes

© The Authors, 2015. The definitive version of this article is published in The Stephenson Conference- Research for Railways, Institution of Mechanical Engineers, 2015

Language

  • en

Location

Institution of Mechanical Engineers, London

Usage metrics

    Loughborough Publications

    Exports

    RefWorks
    BibTeX
    Ref. manager
    Endnote
    DataCite
    NLM
    DC