0000000000465730
AUTHOR
Marinella Giunta
Novel performance-based technique for predicting maintenance strategy of bitumen stabilised ballast
Abstract Despite being the most used worldwide, railway ballasted tracks presents high maintenance cost related to ballast settlement and particle degradation. With the aim of reducing life cycle costs, bitumen stabilised ballast (BSB) has been recently proposed as a relatively cheap alternative maintenance solution to be applied to existing tracks. This study aims at assessing the potential advantages of this technology, defining a novel maintenance strategy of traditional ballasted track-beds. A protocol for the application of the BSB technology and its associated maintenance strategy is defined. To estimate minor and major maintenance operations of BSB scenario in comparison to tradition…
Measuring the Sustainability of Transportation Infrastructures Through Comparative Life Cycle and Energy Assessment
The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development was adopted at the United Nations Sustainable Development Summit on 25 September 2015. It addresses people, planet and prosperity needs and particularly focuses on transport systems that must be 1) Sustainable. 2) Quality and resilient. 3) Safe. 4) Affordable and accessible. The Research Project PRIN USR342 focuses on similar concepts and the expected outputs are 3 paving solutions (made with recycled materials and sustainable technologies), 4 sets of modules (software), and 2 platforms. In this view, the objective of this study is the identification of the best pavement technology in terms of energy and environmental performance. To this aim a LC…
Assessing the Open Trenches in Screening Railway Ground-Borne Vibrations by Means of Artificial Neural Network
Reducing ground borne vibrations in urban areas is a very challenging task in railway transportation. Many mitigation measures can be considered and applied; among these open trenches are very effective. This paper deals with the study of the effect, in terms of reduction of vertical and horizontal displacements and velocities, of the open trenches. 2D FEM simulations have been performed and several open trench configurations have been analysed varying the main geometric features such as width and depth, distance from the rail, thickness of the soil layer over the rigid bedrock, type of the ground, ratio between the depth of the trench, and the thickness of the soil layer. For quantifying t…
A comparative life-cycle assessment of asphalt mixtures for railway sub-ballast containing alternative materials
Abstract Bituminous sub-ballast in railway track-bed can mitigate the variation of the moisture content in the subgrade and reduce vertical stiffness variations of the track leading to a more durable infrastructure. Nevertheless, durability is only one of the aspects that affects the sustainability of an infrastructure. Other relevant aspects are related to the environmental and economic issues. This research work joins the worldwide effort towards a paradigm shift in civil engineering devoted to assess the sustainability of infrastructures at the design stage. With this in mind, in this study different alternative bituminous sub-ballast mixtures containing recycled materials, namely crumb …
Environmental sustainability and energy assessment of bituminous pavements made with unconventional materials
The increasing sensibility towards the questions related to climate change has made the scientists and technicians aware of the need to incorporate the principles of sustainable development into the road construction sector. In this view, recycled materials in road pavements and technologies to decrease the overall carbon footprint have become more and more important. Based on the ISO14040 series, the overall purpose of this study is calculating, by means of a systemic approach, the life-cycle energy and the carbon footprint of road pavement solutions. To this aim, several alternatives in terms of bituminous mixtures (warm mix asphalt, reclaimed asphalt pavements, waste plastics) were consi…