Project description
New tech for railway crossing management
Railway crossings degrade quickly, typically lasting less than five years, despite being designed for 15. This deterioration leads to significant unplanned maintenance costs and delays, which could be avoided with better management. The EU-funded XCROSS project aims to develop innovative technologies for monitoring, inspecting, and maintaining crossing surface profiles. These technologies will include new inspection techniques utilising 3D laser scanning and computer vision, digital twins of the crossing with advanced calculation algorithms, and the development of augmented reality and 3D printing techniques for on-site maintenance. Additionally, the project will establish an early warning system to detect initial signs of degradation and trigger the maintenance process.
Objective
Railway crossings degrade significantly faster than plain line track, with lifespans commonly lasting less than 5 years despite their design lives typically being 15 years. This results in Billions of Euros being spent on unplanned corrective maintenance, crossing renewals and delay-minutes, which would not occur if they could be better managed to reach their design lives.
XCROSS will develop a suite of integrated disruptive technologies which combine to provide a technological process for the monitoring, inspection, and maintenance intervention of crossing surface profiles. To achieve the objectives, new crossing inspection techniques will be developed using 3D laser scanning technology and computer vision to allow for fast, repeatable and high accuracy crossing measurement. These 3D scans will then be used to create digital twins (DT) of the crossing, embedded with advanced wheel-rail interaction calculation algorithms. Considering these wheel forces and also on-site practical maintenance constraints, the digital twin will use optimisation strategies to calculate the optimal geometry profile achievable via on-site welding and grinding techniques in terms of lifecycle cost. Then, to enable practical implementation of the calculated optimum crossing profile geometries, Augmented Reality (AR) and 3D printing techniques will be developed to provide visualisation guides for on-site welding and grinding. These technologies will allow the maintenance engineers to see their welding and grinding progress ‘live’, and thus be an enabler for a step-change in the quality control of crossing interventions. Lastly, an early warning system will also be developed to act as the initial trigger for the deployment of the 3D scanning, AR and 3D printing. It is vital for detecting the early signs of degradation and thus initiating the deployment of the new maintenance process before the onset of irreparable degradation.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
This project's classification has been human-validated.
Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.2.5 - Climate, Energy and Mobility
MAIN PROGRAMME
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HORIZON.2.5.8 - Smart Mobility
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Topic(s)
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-JU-RIA - HORIZON JU Research and Innovation Actions
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) HORIZON-JU-ER-2023-01
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
2628 CN Delft
Netherlands
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.