Rail joints have a shorter service life than most other railway track components. The discontinuity between rail ends turns the rail joint into a weak spot, and consequently, into a track component demanding more frequent maintenance measures, which result in high maintenance costs. Moreover, difficulties are often found when assessing the damage condition of rail joints since damage conditions...

High speed intercity passenger rail is an inherently strong railway application. It operates over 250 km/hour. For perspective, high-speed represents the ultimate development of preexisting standard gauge infrastructure. Network of high-speed passenger rail lines aimed at reducing accident, reducing traffic congestion, air pollution cutting national dependence on foreign oil and improving rural...

The evaluation and control of the trains induced vibrations needs even more attention in the case of underground tracks which passes near to monuments and historical sites. The rail corrugations which occur due to the wheels’ impulse loads during the operation period of underground railway tracks, usually amplify the ground borne noise and vibration. In the current study, the mentioned phenomen...

Today, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan all have high-speed lines in operation. Many other countries, including Brazil, India, Morocco, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States, either have high-speed rail systems under construction or under development. Within the next few years, the world’s high-speed rail network co...

Today, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, the United Kingdom, China, Japan, Korea and Taiwan all have high-speed lines in operation. Many other countries, including Brazil, India, Morocco, Russia, Saudi Arabia and the United States, either have high-speed rail systems under construction or under development. Within the next few years, the world’s high-speed rail network co...

Departing from the present situation, this paper attempts to highlight future prospects of high-speed railways. A panorama of high-speed lines worldwide is first given and the limits of a further increase of rail speeds are surveyed. It is explained that rail high speeds are feasible only for large population concentrations. The impact of high speeds on the reduction of travel times is studied....

In this paper, novel ultra low voltage (ULV) dual-rail NOR gates are presented which use the semi-floating-gate (SFG) structure to speed up the logic circuit. Higher speed in the lower supply voltages and robustness against the input signal delay variations are the main advantages of the proposed gates in comparison to the previously reported domino dual-rail NOR gates. The simulation results i...

The state of California is expected to have significant population growth in the next half-century resulting in additional passenger transportation demand. Planning for a high-speed rail system connecting San Diego, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and Sacramento as well as many population centers between is now underway. The considerable investment in California high-speed rail has been debated for...

Investigation of vertical vibrations of a railway turnout is important in designing track components under moving loads of trains. In this paper, the turnout is simulated by a linear finite element model with modal damping. A section of the turnout has a length of 36 sleeper spans surrounding the crossing. Rails and sleepers are modeled with uniform Rayleigh- Timoshenko beam elements. The rail...