User:Brandon Zi Chang/sandbox

Hand-held Rail grinders
The ERICO Company designs and produces hand-held rail grinders and drills for the railway industry as maintenance of way tools. ERICO uses Honda four-stroke engines to power their railway drill and rail grinder which have been reported to be ergonomic and easy to refuel. ERICOs primary goal in manufacturing maintenance of way equipment is producing safe, reliable and effective equipment for public and private industry. ERICO also recognized the need for a metal replacement handguard for the SBG150 grinder having received customer feedback concerning the safety of operators using the grinder while located in isolated stretches of track in poor weather. ERICO has made efforts to expand its current selection of hand tools to accommodate the maintenance of way market and traditional signalman requirements. Rail grinders were originally used for rail preparation prior to the attachment of bonds, but now also serve as a multipurpose tool capable of rail prep, maintenance and repair

Grinding Quality Index
The Grinding Quality Index is a software-based template used to measure the Profile of a rail. This allows the desired rail Profile to be compared to the actual rail Profile. Grinding Quality Index software makes use of laser-based hardware mounted to the front and rear of the rail grinder. The use of laser-based hardware on maintenance of way vehicles such as rail grinders allow workers and contractors take precise measurements of the rail Profile before and after grinding. The Grinding Quality Index is rated from 0 (Low Priority) to 100 (Low Priority). Grinding Quality Software is able to record and document measurements independently and provide a GQI rating for each rail on the track for before and after each pass on the grinder. The advantage of using Grinding Quality Index software is the ability to produce post-grinding reports for later usage by planners to help further prioritize and monitor grinding Profiles in the future. GQI reports also provide analysis on the consistency of profiling to determine if grinding operations are consistently improving or deteriorating the rail Profile. The usage of Grinding Quality Index software also provides the ability to produce accurate assessments of rail grinder effectiveness in real-time which allows for work to be prioritized more efficiently and be executed in a timely manner

Health Concerns
In the railway industry, there are risk factors involved with the prolonged usage of maintenance of way vehicles by vehicle operators during day-to-day track maintenance and construction. A common risk factor is prolonged exposure to excessive whole body vibration and shock exposure to the vertical and horizontal axis' of the lumbar spine and vertebral endplate which can lead to spinal injury and or long term damage to the vertebral bone structure. The American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists has in the past proposed threshold limit values for whole body vibration with certain guidelines also being based on ISO-2631 standards, but no official exposure threshold limits for maintenance of way vehicles have seen widespread publication or enforcement. The ACGIH-TLV limits worker whole body vibration exposure to no more than 8 hours in duration. In the European Union a new risk assessment model (VibRisk model) for structural failure of the lumbar spine in the lower back was proposed as a result of vibration risk research. The VibRisk model provides more specific risk assessments of vertebral endplate failure on individual lumbar levels taking into account driver posture. When compared the risk assessment proposed using the VibRisk Model posed a higher risk of vertebral endplate failure at different lumbar levels than ISO-2631 part 5 standards suggested. The main contributing factor that VibRisk incorporates that the ISO-2631 part 5 standards are lacking is the recognition of operator posture as an additional stress factor when exposed to vibration and multiple shocks.

Rail Corrugation
Rail corrugation is a type of track wear that develops from track and train wheel set contact over time. Once this process has started it will begin to grow exponentially worse as time progresses. The wear that develops due to the wheel set contact between railways takes its form in the many troughs and crests it leaves behind over time which may or may not develop into rail corrugation depending on the circumstances. The estimated tendency for wear is calculated by taking into account fluctuations in track and wheel set contact which causes the amount of wear to vary. The dynamic properties of different lines of the track can lead to varied degrees of rail corrugation through the use of high-speed wheel sets. In a study of high-speed railroad tracks, four types of tracks were studied for their tendency to develop corrugation (RHEDA 200, AFTRAV, STEDEF, and high performance ballasted track) and of the four considered the ballasted track was the one least prone to rail corrugation with the AFTRAV track being the second most reliable as well.