The shear resistance at the sleeper–ballast interface of a ballasted track is an important contributor in maintaining stability under faster and heavier axle loads where ballast undergoes significant lateral sliding. Different types interfaces based on type sleeper arrangements, such as concrete sleepers, timber pads (USPs) attached to sleepers influence railway tracks. Therefore, this study de...

Effective and economical tools are needed for treating ship ballast to meet new regulatory requirements designed to reduce the introduction of invasive aquatic species from ship traffic. We tested the efficacy of hydroxide stabilization as a ballast disinfection tool in replicated, sequential field trials on board the M/V Ranger III in waters of Lake Superior. Ballast water was introduced into ...

To limit the spread of non-indigenous marine species, ships can be legally required to conduct ballast water exchange (BWE) prior to discharging ballast water. It has been proposed to verify BWE by measuring concentrations of coastal tracers in ballast tanks, which should track their removal. Using 3 Australian ports as case studies (Port Botany, Port Curtis and Port Phillip Bay), each represen...

Ballast water discharge from ships has been the most important vector for introducing nonindigenous species to the Laurentian Great Lakes, and is responsible for many of the most ecologically and economically disruptive invasions in the basin (Mills et al. 1993, Ricciardi 2006). In an attempt to limit further invasions, ships entering the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence River system with ballast water...

As a vector by which foreign species invade coastal and freshwater waterbodies, ballast water discharge from ships is recognized as a major environmental threat. The International Maritime Organization (IMO) drafted an international treaty establishing ballast water discharge standards based on the number of viable organisms per volume of ballast discharge for different organism size classes. C...

A spatial and temporal numerical simulation has been carried out of a pulsed (100% modulated), rf inductively coupled plasma discharge in argon, connected to an additional (ballast) diffusion chamber of much larger volume. It is demonstrated that during the active phase, the presence of the large ballast volume has a small impact on the parameters of the plasma in the smaller discharge chamber....

Ballast is a porous layer that reduces the effective contact surface between sleeper and ballast. Also, does not have smooth bottom surface, which causes reduction of ballast particles. At field experiments, by installing sensitive papers under sleepers track, cyclic load was imposed passing trains, after certain amount loads, pressure paper removed, measured while in laboratory investigation, ...

In this paper will be reported the implementation of a flexible platform to study electronic ballasts systems. The platform is a microcontrolled and FPGA-based system and was developed to generate command signals to the half bridge inverter. A specific hardware using FPGA was developed to generate the switches signals command. This hardware is responsible for the autonomous frequency (FM) and p...