Quantum Technology - Potential for Railway Infrastructure (QT-PRI)

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

QT-PRI is a collaboration between RSK, Atkins, Network Rail and the University of Birmingham (UoB) to establish the Quantum Technology (QT) gravity sensor market opportunities against assessment of current geophysical technologies to detect and assess the condition of assets buried below the railway network, in particular drains, as well as water flow through the railway earthworks. There are over 190,000 railway earthworks and over 6000km buried assets. The incomplete and immature asset inventory significantly limits the development of a decision support framework to allow proactive condition assessment thereby maximising the limited resources and keeping the rail network operational. Currently, geophysical sensors are commercially used to detect the location of the ducts and pipes in roads and with limited success on the railways, but are rarely used to detect the asset condition or the condition of the parent asset (earthwork) itself. Thus, currently geotechnical failures are often reported by train drivers or by walking the asset at a cost of ~£8M/year. This limits any proactive asset management and often results in longer disruptions to the rail network. To overcome these limitations and open up a new application for geophysical sensors, QT-PRI will: 1) Establish the market potential for QT gravity sensors for railway infrastructure by benchmarking it against the most advanced state-of-the-art geophysical instrumentation currently used in the railway industry; 2) Develop novel post-processing techniques to identify the signal of interest, especially along the rail network and Undertake field trials to demonstrate the real-world capabilities and limitations of existing sensors to identify the operational space for QT sensors; 3) Determine technical sensor specifications for QT gravity sensors and 4) Assess the market of QT gravity instruments used both at train speed and quasi stationary to detect buried assets and visualise water flow in railway earthworks. QT-PRI will accelerate the commercialisation of QT gravity instruments in three ways: 1) ensuring that the sensor development and system engineering efforts produces instruments that are fit for purpose by providing sensor configuration and performance parameters with particular focus on time-lapse assessment and data collection at train speed, 2) increasing the marketplace for the sensors by engagement with a client base not yet familiar with QT sensors, excellent dissemination activities, and practical field demonstrations and 3) demonstrating what can be achievable from commercial geophysical system with respect to sensitivity, resilience, size, weight and cost in comparison with the Return on Investment using QT gravity sensors.QT-PRI will open up a new market for QT gravity sensors by: 1) Assessing in detail the capability and limitations of the best suite of current geophysical sensors for the railway environment; 2) Increasing the marketplace for the sensors by engagement with the client base, excellent dissemination activities, and practical field demonstrations of prototype equipment capability.