From the FRONTIERS publication group and the “little engine that couldn’t, because climate change” department, comes this idiotic press-release masquerading as a science paper.
Engineering and maintaining railway bridges has always been difficult — climate change, however, creates a whole new level of challenge
Physicist Michio Kaku once said, “What we usually consider as impossible are simply engineering problems… there’s no law of physics preventing them.” And so it has been with railway and metro bridges that span waterways. The city of Washington, D.C., is bounded on two sides by rivers and an untold number of streams. Every morning the Orange Line, one of six train lines that serve the city, ferries 12,060 commuters — per hour. And this miracle occurs every day in Berlin, Tokyo, London, Amsterdam, Shanghai, and numerous other metropolitan areas. In the United Kingdom alone there are more than 40,000 railway bridges.
Much has been written on how to maintain this infrastructure, particularly in the difficult transition zones where trains leave land to ascend bridges over water. “All railway systems suffer rapid track deterioration at the transition zones requiring high maintenance costs,” said Sakdirat Kaewunruen, Ph.D., Department of Civil Engineering, University of Birmingham, United Kingdom. “In the past decades, there have been so many ad hoc solutions provided, but there has been no work on evaluating its life cycle cost and sustainability.”
Each nation has employed its own methodology for maintenance and repairs, but new, daunting challenges created by climate change — extreme heat, extreme cold, and severe flooding — require yet more rigorous solutions.
An unprecedented study titled, “Lifecycle Assessments of Railway Bridge Transitions Exposed to Extreme Events,” published in Frontiers in Built Environment, benchmarks the costs and carbon emissions for the life cycle of eight mitigation measures and reviews these methods for their effectiveness in three types of extreme environmental conditions.
Railway systems are designed for a 50-year lifespan, which is calculated on the integrity of the materials used, and most railways are built along one of two common track systems: rails set on railway ties (U.S.A.) or sleepers (UK), which are then ‘ballasted’ into beds of rock or gravel; or rails that are set onto concrete slabs. Sometimes both are used on one rail line with one transiting to the other. In either case, the engineering feat that must be solved is that as the train crosses the transition between ground and bridge, the relative stiffness of the bedrock, concrete, vs. metal bridge can impart intense vibrations that drastically impact the train rails and even make the ride uncomfortable to commuters. Transition zones require four to eight times more maintenance than ordinary rail tracks.
The study investigates mitigation measures for bridges that span 30 meters and 100 meters. The study reviews the eight most common techniques for bridge transitions, including: under ballast mats (UBMs), soft baseplates, under sleeper pads (USPs), rail pads, embankment treatments, transition slabs, ballast bonding, and wide sleepers. Overall, the study finds that elastic rail pads, soft baseplates, and UBMS are most suitable for short-span bridges, relying on a range of materials such as elastic materials, chloroprene rubber, or polymeric compounds to provide reduce railway stiffness. Unfortunately, the same materials that provide elasticity deteriorate faster in extreme heat and extreme cold, conditions that have become more frequent with climate change. For reference, the materials tend to exhibit sensitivity at 20 degrees C and severe problems in the dead of winter at -40 degrees C in the far northern latitudes.
For long bridges the authors recommended employing transition slabs, ballast bonding, and embankment treatments — methods that mitigate track stiffness gradually with longer transitions. These solutions tend to be greatly affected by flash flooding that can wash away embankments and ballast that supports the track structure. In some areas of Norway flooding has turned sediments into mud causing train tracks to collapse.
“Global warming and climate change… increase the renewal and wear rates of lubrication materials, as well as the possibility of track twisting and buckling,” said Kaewunruen in an earlier paper with Lei Wu, who is currently working on the Kuala Lumpur-Singapore High Speed Railway.
In this study, the authors provide engineering assumptions and sample calculations for their recommendations, but also stress that solutions need to be developed on a case-by-case basis, taking into account cost over the life cycle, environmental factors, and the impact high maintenance can have on the carbon footprint. Furthermore, cost of materials and of maintenance can range widely from country to country.
“Climate change is a significant issue for every industry in the world,” said Kaewunruen. “Next we will analyze scenarios with multiple hazards. We have been informed that some events may come together, for example an earthquake at the same time as extreme heat, or extreme wind at the same time as extreme rainfall or runoff. Bridges respond to different events individually, but when you have multiple hazards simultaneously they can suffer even greater impacts.”
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In Norway there are places that frequently has temperatures ranging from minus 30C to plus 25C during one year. Of course 0,5 degree C more or less will have a huge impact…… /s
The usual heap of unevidenced woo and bald assertions. We really need something like a journalistic FDA or advertising standards authority to oversee this kind of thing and revoke people’s license who make factual statements without any supporting evidence.
I am sure the engineers will be overwhelmed by this rapid pace of change. It will be so huge and quick that their skills will be challenged./sarc This type of activity is nothing more than money sucking waste of money used to scare people.
Gary, it is amazing how this issue has turned engineering into a profession that used to be kind of a black and white professions to now wifty stuff. I remember sitting down and talking about how to design steam turbines to allow for 1/4 of the steam to be pulled off to aid in the removal, capture and transport of CO2. That discussion should have ended quickly. The efficiency of the plant would have plummeted and about any other plant would be more efficient. But, it turned into a full blown study.
Another example. I had to write an explanation of why the CO2 emitted from a coal fired plant would not dissolve the nearby cliffs that consisted of limestone in a permit application. My answer would have been – dumb question, next. I had to write a report on this issue. Lost of fluffy, whiffy stuff in it.
For the most part, trains don’t ascend bridges. Trains don’t do inclines well.
Trains have been operating across the southern prairies in Canada since the 1870s. Winnipeg has recorded temps as high as 43 C and as low as -45 C. During extreme cold operations slow down but the system is engineered for the temperature range.
A couple of year’s ago we took the train from Toronto to Vancouver in February. One morning in Northern Ontario, it was so cold (around -40) that exhaust from the diesel engines formed a condensation trail, similar to those behind high-flying airplanes.
Um….”severe flooding”, and “extreme heat and extreme cold” are weather related events…not climate change events.
Building railways in areas prone to flash flooding, or in “sediments” is just asking for trouble. It’s not the climate’s fault that humans are stupid.
Wow, another search for fake effects of fake CAGW. If only they could come up w/even one, real, demonstrable effect.
Throughout history bridges have shown to be a solvable engineering problem. Near my place of birth a bridge stands as testament to just that. Built shortly after the Civil War it has carried trains across the Ohio River for 147 years, and is still in use. I don’t know what turnip wagon these people fell off of, but obviously they landed on their head. Perhaps a little pre-publication research would have helped. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkersburg_Bridge_(CSX)
From the article: “Each nation has employed its own methodology for maintenance and repairs, but new, daunting challenges created by climate change — extreme heat, extreme cold, and severe flooding — require yet more rigorous solutions.”
Extreme heat, extreme cold, and severe flooding have been around since the beginning of time.
The evidence is the weather is less extreme now, with CO2 at 400ppm, than it was in the past with less CO2 in the atmosphere. Just the opposite of what the CAGW Alarmist say should be happening.
Any extreme weather metric you look at shows extreme weather has declined over the years.
While this article was a bit puzzling in what it really had to do much with AGW, I found it interesting in some aspects as it related to one of my first jobs as a brakeman in the lead locomotive 40+ years ago. From the days when the trains had a caboose and the Conductor in the caboose was the boss of the train. At any rate, I recall an old seasoned engineer that I rode with who would when approaching a longer river bridge, would slightly speed up before arriving at the bridge and then just before arriving at the bridge would begin to slow down ever so slightly in stages while crossing the bridge. I asked why he did this, and he replied that he had learned this from older engineers and the rationale was that it was like the Roman Army crossing a long foot bridge, and they were ordered to break step in their march across the bridge, so as not to collapse the bridge from their uniform step causing vibration and stress in the bridge.
My engineer boss explained that bridges had resonance and if the train kept up the same exact speed, then the bridge would begin to vibrate and if a really long train, then there was a higher risk the bridge could fail from induced harmonics of the repetitive vibration if not broken up by random speed differential. My engineer friend said he could ‘feel’ the difference in the bridge motion by slowing down (or speeding up) on the bridge and that many bridge failures had happened historically when the train speed stayed the same and any failure or damage would more likely to happen if speed was maintained at a constant.
I have no idea if the physics of this was true, but it seemed like those old engineers were convinced by their own observations of the facts on the ground that they themselves witnessed and felt. After reading this article, this is what came to my mind.
“While this article was a bit puzzling in what it really had to do much with AGW, I found it interesting in some aspects as it related to one of my first jobs as a brakeman in the lead locomotive 40+ years ago. From the days when the trains had a caboose and the Conductor in the caboose was the boss of the train.”
I worked as a train dispatcher and as a station agent during my railroad days, 1974 to 1990, on the Katy Railroad, and the Union Pacific. I really enjoyed those jobs, once I got the hang of it. Sure did hate to see those cabooses go. It just wasn’t the same.
“Earthling August 30, 2017 at 10:22 am”
Yes, the marching army sets up a resonance, which when matched to the resonance frequency of the structure, it can fail. The Romans learned quickly. I can’t recall where I read that, but it would have been a long time ago. Thanks for reminding me.
Good Lord . . . .
Well, in the face of climate change LEGISLATION a lot of things might become difficult.
Of course, it’s not like making things easier or better is a priority.
Clearly a carbon tax will save the railroads.
/snark
IN THE FACE OF CLIMATE CHANGE can someone please tell our engineers to place emergency diesel generators and 48 hour fuel tanks on the second floor?? Cc: chemical plants, nuclear plants.
You would think this would be a nobrainer, right? Building a facility in a flood prone region, you locate the highest point within the bounds of the area you are building, raise it above projected flood levels, and place your emergency power systems and their fuel sources ON TOP OF this point. I blame the educational system, it is causing, intentionally, massive brain damage in the engineering, architecture and science fields in America.
So, why is building a railway a few miles further south be SO much more difficult than at a slightly more northerly location, all other things being equal? (in the Northern Hemisphere)