Our Research

The project

Shared travel offers an important way to make rail services accessible. Providing an integrated capability for rail travel is both a conceptual and technical challenge.

The Ride2Rail project enables ‘easy use for all’. This is through ridesharing as part of a multimodal journey. Ride2Rail’s aim is to develop intelligent multimodal mobility. It combines flexible and crowdsourced transport services, such as ridesharing, with scheduled transport.

A requirements activity has set out the travel behaviour and system requirements. The technical implementation of Ride2Rail into the wider Shift2Rail ecosystem covers:

• the development of the Ride2Rail functionalities
• the Ride2Rail Driver Companion application

Ride2Rail has been prepared, implemented, executed and monitored at three demonstration sites to date.

Newcastle University’s role

Our role has been to lead evaluation and key performance indicator (KPI) metrics. We’ve collaborated with demonstration stakeholders to understand the project’s performance targets. We then delivered a robust methodology for measuring demonstration outcomes and impact.

We’ve designed methodology for the qualitative analysis of usability and user experience of the service. This helps us understand what makes a shared travel service acceptable and easy to use. Finally, we conducted large-scale survey work in the North East of England. This covered local acceptance of shared travel services connecting with the rail network. This project received funding from the Shift2Rail Joint Undertaking under the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement no. 881825.

Safety and performance in the rail freight yard are essential. This covers the safety of ground staff and ensuring vehicles enter the network in an appropriate condition. We’ve supported the Rail Safety and Standards Board and the National Freight Safety Group in understanding:

• human factors in the rail freight yard
• how this influences the condition of freight vehicles on the network

Causal and human factors can lead to accidents. We’ve carried out structured incident and accident analysis to understand these factors. We then observed and interviewed ground staff and management. This covered the challenges of freight yard work, which we validated in a workshop with freight representatives.

Our output is a report to the National Freight Safety Group and RSSB and a collaborative conference paper. We’re proud that the Ergonomics and Human Factors 2023 awarded our report Best Paper. Our work underpinned a £2m investment into safety in rail freight yards. We’ll also be presenting it at the RSSB Board and RSSB Operational Risk Conference.

55 senior members of the rail freight community attended a seminar day in Newcastle in July. This event discussed the way forward for human performance in the rail freight yard. We’ve disseminated our work to:

• the Office of Road and Rail, Rail Accident Investigation Branch
• The Department for Transport
• the European Union Agency for Rail
• rail safety practitioners in the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand

We’ve set up our next stage of work to understand the role of Human Performance in the 2050 Freight Yard.

This project focused on the logistics sector. It was funded through a programme to investigate applications for 5G. An autonomous (self-driving) truck was demonstrated at the Nissan and Vantec private site in Sunderland. The truck incorporated remote operation for extra security.

The autonomous truck operated a live route between Vantec and Nissan. This route usually sees 13 HGVs and approximately 100–120 deliveries per day. Autonomous operation took place across the whole route, including reversing at Vantec. The vehicle implemented remote operations at junctions and for reversing at Nissan. A safety driver was present as required under legislation.

The 5G infrastructure used the Ofcom shared access spectrum N77, designed and built by North. It partnered with Nokia to use the Nokia Digital Automation Cloud to create a standalone private wireless network.

Streetdrone built an eNV200 test mule vehicle to enable autonomous software and remote operation development in parallel with the conversion of an existing Terberg tractor unit. A remote operation workstation (rig) was built and located at Vantec. A vehicle-in-the-loop simulator verified the autonomous software performance on the live route.

This project aimed to show safe and effective 5G-enabled autonomous and remote operations. It would further prove it’s possible to remove the safety driver from the vehicle.

The evaluation measured the remote operator’s attention and behaviour when using the system. It focused on the effect of mental disengagement on takeover performance and behaviour. It also qualitatively investigated the operator’s needs and requirements.

The project was a success. It developed a system that delivered autonomous live loads with remote operation. It demonstrated connected and autonomous logistics in a real-world manufacturing setting.

IMAGE is one of 30 groundbreaking projects that won a share of £9 million from the Department for Transport, in partnership with Innovate UK. The competition focused on developing pioneering technology and exceptional ideas that can:

• improve journeys for travellers
• encourage passengers back onto the network
• reduce the environmental impacts of rail as we build back better from COVID-19

The project was one of 30 winners of Innovate UK’s First-of-A-Kind 2021 rail competition, funded by the Department for Transport.

The new mast weighs 80kg with the baseplate attached. An equivalent steel mast with a similar strength weighs 375kg. This novel composite mast reduces transportation costs and requires a shorter pile foundation. This means reduced time and costs for installation, offering a greener and cheaper way to electrify the rail network.

The composite mast was produced using the materials and design expertise of Newcastle and Cranfield Universities. We made the mast using advanced composite materials. The unveiling of the new mast could mark the start of a potential move away from galvanised steel in supporting overhead line equipment. It aims to offer a greener and cheaper way to electrify the rail network and secure the benefits of electrification more rapidly. The composite material mast was developed to cut costs and carbon in construction.

The mast is now undergoing extensive testing. This covers the full scope of its capabilities being further developed for manufacture. With embedded smart sensors, the masts provide data back to owners to:

• inform maintenance schedules
• reduce the need for manual line-side checks
• provide efficiency savings over the lifetime of a mast

The mast development brought together companies committed to the improvement of transport:

• public transport electrification engineers Furrer+Frey
• Cranfield, Southampton and Newcastle Universities
• composite materials manufacturer Prodrive
• rail technology developers, TruckTrain

The Knowledge Transfer Partnership (KTP) project aims to inspect and monitor the floor of storage tanks’ thickness variation. This includes underside corrosion and cracks in welded joints. On completion, the project can provide storage tanks with a continuous monitoring system. This can end periodic non-destructive inspections and tank retirement. This could save thousands of dollars, save human lives and prevent financial losses in the event of tank rupture.

The project will provide technical documents on the functionality and specification of the electromagnetic acoustic transducer (EMAT) measurement system. The system inspects and monitors industrial storage tanks. This is key to bridging the gap between the capabilities of laboratory design and industrial design systems.

Underside corrosion and welded joint cracks contribute to storage tank failure. The KTP project conducts a thorough investigation of oil and gas storage tank floors to detect any signs. Thus, this project is to utilise the EMAT as a monitoring and inspection system for storage tanks.

The EMAT technique is the most suitable because:

• it has a non-contact and couplant-free nature
• of its ability to generate multiple acoustic signals.

This system can communicate with the end user to provide accurate information on the structural health integrity of the tank. This empowers them to make informed decisions for better preventive maintenance.

The project started by developing a model of a laboratory mini-project. This evaluates the thickness of metallic samples. It does this using the EMAT technique with and without coatings by using some laboratory instruments. The laboratory mini-project uses five different EMAT probes, excitation and receiving units, including a signal conditioning hardware unit.

The laboratory EMAT probe system results can assess the thickness of steel material with and without coatings. Moving forward, the project plan is to miniaturise the mini-project model. This will make it portable and allow demonstration on the actual storage tank floor in industrial places. Then, the mini-project will be expanded and upgraded to the main project.

The proposed strategy involves upscaling the mini-project into an industrial operation. It’ll incorporate a range of sensor nodes and their signal processing for proper display of the project outcome and its alarming system. The end users will determine this based on what they need.

The complete project system operation will be showcased in different industrial tanks to the company's technical team to update the system specifications.