CORDIS

The general aim of the FR8RAIL proposal is to support the Shift2Rail Multi Annual Action Plan and includes the following areas:
• Identification of market segments
• Development of specification and key performance indicators
• To initiate and specify functional requirements for:
o Conditioned based maintenance
o Automatic coupling
o Telematics and electrification
o Running gear
o Core market wagon and
o Extended market wagon

WP1: Business Analytics, KPIs, Top Level Requirements
In order to achieve the beyond state- of- the art results within innovation programme 5 it will be of strong importance to identify the right prerequisites on system level. The different focus areas will contribute with its input as well as input from SMARTRAIL and e.g. CAPACITY4RAIL with regards to market analysis.
Objectives and actions in this WP will be:
- Identification of Market Segments and its requirements in the transport market to maintain and expand the market share of freight rail business.
- Development of high level technical specifications
- Development of Key Performance Indicators for the whole IP 5 Programme

WP2: Condition based maintenance
The objective is to develop an overall condition based and predictive maintenance strategy in alignment with all overall Shift2Rail targets.
Definition of new roles and responsibilities in the interaction of the area asset, fleet and maintenance management.
Develop a condition based maintenance program based on specific locomotives and based on a number of components (up to TRL 3-5).

WP3: Telematics and electrification
The objective of this work package is to decide upon the suitable hardware (i.e. sensors, communication technology and computers) based on an existing prototype (WaggonTracker-Advanced). The development of algorithms and connected big data analysis, the implementation and the testing of the prototypes is other important objectives.

WP4: Running gear, Core and Extended market wagon
The objective is to deliver specific requirements for the freight running gear and the Core and Extended Market Wagons based on top level requirements from WP1. It will be defined including needed research activities, missing technologies, etc. For the freight running gear, concepts will be developed with particular focus on vehicle-track interaction (vehicle dynamics, wear, damage, noise) and LCC. Furthermore, results from WP3 and WP4 will be integrated into the concept.
A further focus of the project will be set on optimizing the acoustic and aerodynamic characteristics of the wagon design. It includes a basis for energy efficiency, improved cross wind stability and the determination of aerodynamic forces as an input for the running dynamics.
The global aim is to develop track friendly, low noise, LCC oriented and 5L based running gear for existing core market and to increase the attractiveness of European Freight Railway system towards other transport systems.

WP5: Automatic coupling
Increased flexibility through virtual train coupling and the resulting increase in freight train lengths will help to respond to the challenge of road freight productivity and enable sustainable growth in freight traffic along key European corridors. Following two steps are included in this call:
1. Automatic coupler conceptual design. Report describing the conceptual design of the automatic coupler.
2. Migration plan. Report defining the migration plan to introduce the automatic couplers in the freight market.

In Innovation Programme 5 (IP5), Technologies for Sustainable & Attractive European Rail Freight, two challenges have been addressed:
• To acquire a new service-oriented profile for rail freight services based on excellence in on-time delivery at competitive prices, interweaving its operations with other transport modes, addressing the needs of the clientele among others by incorporating innovative value-added services.
• To increase productivity, by addressing current operational and system weakne