PDEng Programme in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Technology University Delft

Professional Doctorate in Engineering (PDEng) programmes are 2-year post-master programmes from the technical universities in the Netherlands with a focus on technological design. The project is part of the PDEng programme in Civil and Environmental Engineering from TU Delft. This programme consists of an individual design project in the industry supported by in-depth and broadening educational courses at TU Delft. The project will be carried out for BAM Infra Rail in close cooperation with the Railway Engineering department of TU Delft. It aims at creative and new designs for the improvement of maintenance of railway tracks.

Prediction of maintenance and prevention of damages are key elements in the business of railway track asset management. Rail damages have a major impact on safety, reliability and availability of the public railway infrastructure. Most of these damages are related to the wheel-rail contact, caused by RCF (Rolling Contact Fatigue). To prevent RCF damages from developing further and causing serious deterioration of the rail, detection in an early stage is essential. Timely discovered damages can be removed by grinding the rail surface. However, when initial RCF damages have developed into significant surface defects, drastic (and costly) actions like deposition welding of the surface top or replacement of the rails are necessary. Early detection and understanding of the root cause of RCF damage play an important role in the development of predictive and preventive railway track maintenance. In this PDEng project three areas of technology will come together:

Physics and dynamics of the railway system, especially the wheel-rail interface,
Sensor technology and systems,
Big data and algorithms.

Further details:
PDEng Programme in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Technology University Delft