Project description
Cutting-edge technology for the future of European rail
The EU-funded RECET4Rail project’s ambition is to provide essential knowledge and competence that can lead the improvement to high technology readiness levels of Shift2Rail traction demonstrations on trains developed by Shift2Rail members. This collaboration paves the way for future key developments in fields such as digitalisation applied to traction, environmental sustainability (especially devising carbon-free traction systems) and reinforcement of standardisation to lower complexity and costs. Four workstreams are envisaged: 3D additive manufacturing and new manufacturing technologies; wireless dynamic charging for urban vehicles based on silicon carbide (SiC) semiconductors and high power Li-ion batteries sizing; investigations on reliability of traction components and lifetime mechanisms; big data and artificial intelligence for smart and predictive maintenance of traction systems.
Objective
Rail is a fundamental service for modern societies and the backbone of a sustainable transport system. To meet the numerous challenges ahead, the global rail sector must increasingly rely on the emerging disruptive technologies such as advanced robotics, 3-D printing, high computing power and connectivity, etc. which are integrated with analytical and cognitive technologies that enable machine-to-machine and machine-to-human communication.On top comes the pressure to reduce energy consumption, pollution and the consumption of other resources. Mastering the breakthrough developments of new technologies is of capital importance for the railway industry to deliver smart and efficient solutions.Indeed essential to the growth of the rail industry is the reduction of the overall life cycle exploitation costs of all rail sub-systems. The Traction Drive sub-system is one of the main sub-systems of a train as it moves the train converting energy from an electrical source (directly or via a chemical source) into a mechanical one. RECET4Rail will focus on the following new technologies for the Traction Drive sub-system: development of design approaches, end-to-end conception time evaluation and feasibility/performance study of 3D printing technologies for new traction’s components use cases; Dynamic Wireless Power Transfer system sizing for actual city profiles focused on opportunistic charging; improving the understanding of the robustness and reliability of high voltage SiC modules; and development of smart maintenance approaches enabled by predictive analytics, trained on big data. RECET4Rail will provide essential knowledge that will lead to future improvement of the high TRL level S2R traction demonstrations on trains done by the S2R Members, preparing also future S2R key work on domains like digitalisation applied to Traction, environmental sustainability (especially devising carbon free traction systems) or reinforcement of standardisation to lower complexity and costs
Fields of science
- natural sciencescomputer and information sciencesdata sciencebig data
- natural sciencesearth and related environmental sciencesenvironmental sciencespollution
- engineering and technologyelectrical engineering, electronic engineering, information engineeringelectronic engineeringrobotics
- engineering and technologymechanical engineeringmanufacturing engineeringadditive manufacturing
- social sciencessocial geographytransportsustainable transport
Keywords
Programme(s)
Funding Scheme
RIA - Research and Innovation actionCoordinator
1050 Bruxelles / Brussel
Belgium
The organization defined itself as SME (small and medium-sized enterprise) at the time the Grant Agreement was signed.