CAFAC-BAJOLET now offers a new service to help companies develop the use of rubber products across the whole of the railway industry, with the focus on fire-resistant product lines. The French company has been a specialist in the transformation of elastomers for transport industry manufacturers for 50 years. CAFAC showcased its know-how at the Innotrans trade fair in Berlin in September.
A high capacity for innovation makes CAFAC one of the leading fire-resistant rubber manufactur
The Intelligent System for Integrated Tilting (ISIT), developed by rolling stock manufacturers CAF (Basque Country), is a tilting system which activates at the required moment and manages to reduce the centrifugal effect suffered by passengers when a train negotiates bends. Or, in other words:
Cuts journey times (26% on the Santiago-A Coruña run in Galicia) Enhances passenger comfort Anticipates the curved sections of track and eliminates delays Always functions w
EUREKA project E! 2388 LOGCHAIN MUSIC has doubled freight train capacity on the intermodal service Duisburg-Lübeck, which links Norway, Sweden and Finland to Germany and the rest of Europe, through the development of an intermodal conveyor belt. The project not only created this innovative rail production scheme, but has also increased traffic volume and developed two new software packages to aid freight and port management.
“We examined the current freight routes and found that ab
A research institute to examine ways to improve security systems at airports and other transportation hubs is being established at the University at Buffalo under a $538,000 grant from the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) to a UB engineering professor who is an expert in human factors that affect aviation inspection.
To be led by Colin Drury, professor and chair of the Department of Industrial Engineering in the UB School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, the UB Resea
A VTI study performed in the driving simulator shows that using a mobile phone with a handsfree kit is no safer in traffic than using a hand-held mobile phone.
The study shows that the attention of drivers is negatively influenced by a telephone conversation, whether it is with a handsfree or hand-held mobile phone. The participants were however a lot more positive about using a handsfree than a hand-held phone while driving. They also had the impression that their driving performa
A new high-speed cargo catamaran could significantly reduce the number of lorry journeys on European roads thanks to a grant of almost one million euros from the EU’s Framework Programme.
PACSCAT (Partial Air Cushion Supported Catamaran) is a 30 month project to evaluate the possibility of using high-speed river transport to help deal with the rapid growth in freight movement throughout Europe. The capacity of each catamaran will be around 2,000 tonnes – the equivalent of 45 truck l
Sophisticated tools used to survey and monitor passenger flows through busy metro stations may result in unmanageable data loads. ADVISOR’s decision support tools reduce the workload of operators and increase the utility of the data output.
ADVISOR, which stands for Annotated Digital Video for Intelligent Surveillance and Optimised Retrieval, “is a significant aid to the operators in charge of metro security,” says project coordinator Michael Naylor. “The principal of the [ADVISO
Gazing out of the small aircraft window, the endless woods and the numerous lakes caught the eye as we flew from the rainy Netherlands towards beautiful Norway. The assumption that all Norwegians have a sailing boat came to mind, since almost every lake and every fjord has a small harbour with hundreds of boats. It is hard to imagine that these people would not be excited about other means of sustainable transport like the Nuna II.
The Nuna II team and the support crew were welcom
The world’s fastest solar-powered car is being driven through Sweden and Norway. Nuna 2 begins its journey on 14 August in Oslo and completes it on 21 August in Kiruna. It will primarily be driven on the E4, and will stop in Gothenburg, Linköping, Stockholm, Uppsala, Luleå, Kiruna, Narvik, and Andenäs.
There is also the possibility of short stops in other locations. “Journalists and photographers will also be able to take a look at the car at other locations near the route. Just c
New legal requirements of the International Ship and Port Facility Security (ISPS) Code, developed by the International Maritime Organization (IMO), contain a multitude of internationally binding measures to provide better protection against terrorism aimed at ships and port terminals. Ships may be attacked and used for arms shipments or misused as a weapon. Ships and port facilities are exposed to a completely new threat potential since the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001.
SOCOFER will be present at the INNOTRANS trade fair in Berlin from 21 to 24 September 2004. On this occasion, the French engineering company will present its know-how in railway infrastructure maintenance systems, as well as its expertise regarding shunting locomotives and other locomotives, and diesel railcar re-powering.
Forty years of experience in the railways sector and the successful management of a range of international projects – with 50% to 75% of sales generated in expo
Infra-red cameras that automatically count people in cars could soon be a feature on the UK’s motorways, making it easier to enforce priority lanes for car sharing to ease congestion and cut journey times.
The unique patented technology to detect human faces in moving cars without distracting drivers was developed by Laser Optical Engineering (LOE), a spin out company from Loughborough University. Together with commercial, research and civic partners, it has developed a prototype came
The Airbus A380 will be the world’s biggest passenger airplane and it is already a perfect example of global cooperation. The Fraunhofer IML has ensured that the Stade plant near Hamburg will benefit from an optimal material flow and logistics concept.
555 passengers on two decks will be able to travel for 14,800 kilometers non-stop in the Airbus A380 – almost from one end of the Earth to the other. The air route from Berlin to Wellington in New Zealand, for example, covers a distance of abo
Airplanes generate trailing wake vortices which can be dangerous for following aircraft, especially on takeoff and landing. An onboard laser measuring device scans the air space in front of the plane, recognizes turbulence and will inform the pilot.
The volume of air traffic is constantly rising – many air routes are already overloaded. Frequent delays are encountered when machines are taking off and landing at major airports. The frequency of aircraft cannot be increased because they have t
Researchers in the University of Warwick’s Department of Physics have developed a novel non-contact method of using ultrasound to detect and measure cracks and flaws in rail track – particularly gauge corner cracking – that has the potential to simply be attached to a normal passenger or freight train travelling at high speeds.
Current ultrasonic techniques for detecting defects only work at much slower speeds (around 20-30 miles an hour). A handful of special trains have been created usin
A traffic simulation system is helping drivers by predicting jams on Germany’s autobahn network up to an hour before they happen. The secret of its success is to take into account the way real drivers – and their cars – behave. When engineers model the way road traffic flows they break the traffic down into three categories: freely flowing, jammed, and an intermediate state called synchronised flow in which dense traffic moves in unison, like marchers moving in step.
But this synchronised
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