RAIL GRINDING AND FRICTION MANAGEMENT EXPERT

RAIL GRINDING AND FRICTION MANAGEMENT EXPERT

Objective:

To provide to NRC-AST, on an “as and when required” basis, expert Rail Grinding and Friction Management Services.

Background:

The National Research Council Canada, Automotive and Surface Transportation (NRC-AST) is an agency of the government of Canada that was created in 1965. Since that time, NRC-AST has evolved into a world-class organization, providing engineering consulting, R&D services, policy recommendations, and evaluation/certification services to a large and growing stable of domestic and international clients. Many of its clients are railway operators, and railcar and component manufacturers.

Scope:

The Rail Division of the NRC - Automotive and Surface Transportation requires additional expert support on an "as and when required” basis to develop and implement innovative rail grinding and friction management programs for its many clients in North America and internationally. This includes supporting ongoing projects and others still to be developed.

Tasks:

Examples of the tasks that the expert might be asked to undertake include:

• Inspecting, reviewing and reporting on the current condition of railroad track, primarily with respect to the rail surface condition (e.g. rolling contact fatigue, corrugation, plastic flow, profile, etc.) but considering all the related factors that contribute to that condition (e.g. rail steel metallurgy, past grinding and friction management practices, internal defect history, train operating conditions, climate, gauge, curvature, super-elevation, tie-plate cut-in, rail cant, rail welds, rail joints, switches and crossings, etc.)
• Inspecting, reviewing and reporting on the equipment and resources that a railroad has for undertaking an appropriate rail grinding effort, including the type of rail grinding equipment, its current maintenance condition and its performance capabilities, the current and potential expertise of the personnel to be involved, as well as logistical issues such as the capability of a railroad’s operations department to appropriately prioritize and schedule the rail grinding operation.
• Inspecting, reviewing and reporting on the equipment and resources that a railroad has for implementing an appropriate friction management program, including the type of friction management equipment (wayside or on-board), its current maintenance condition and its performance capabilities, the friction management products in use at the railroad, and the current and potential expertise of the personnel to be involved. The expert will need to provide support to the railroad on logistical issues such as the capability of the railroad’s engineering department to monitor the performance of a friction management program to ensure its effectiveness, and the department’s awareness to coordinate with the operations department to remove and reinstall wayside equipment just prior to and immediately after rail grinding (and other forms of track maintenance).
• Training and mentoring of railroad maintenance personnel to perform the rail grinding operations and work related to friction management.
• Assisting AST in the development of new wheel and rail profiles for a candidate railway by gathering accurate measurements of wheel and rail profiles, guiding the team in the design, application and validation in the field and developing the grinding and friction management strategies for localized or system-wide implementation of the designs.
• Fine-tuning the operation and performance of the rail grinding equipment – including measuring and diagnosing equipment productivity, advising and implementing remedies to improve productivity, developing and implementing optimized rail grinding patterns and speeds to meet required rail profile tolerances, rail surface finish specifications, and metal removal rates for the control of rolling contact fatigue.
• Developing and presenting best practices, business cases and training schools related to rail grinding and friction management.
• Inspecting, reviewing and reporting on the current condition of a railroad’s friction management practices, including the condition and settings of friction management hardware, the effectiveness of the placement of the hardware to optimize rail friction conditions, assessing rail wear rates, friction management product performance, rail surface condition, coefficient of friction, rail wear debris, etc.
• Identifying opportunities for implementing and optimizing rail maintenance practices, and developing ideas and proposals for actualizing those prospects.
• The contractor must also be able to create MS Powerpoint presentations to clearly summarize findings and observations to railroad management at the end of field trips.