RAVEL - Rail Vehicle Eco - Efficient Design

The necessary continuous improvement of the environmental performance does not only concern the environmentally orientated design for the reduction of energy consumption, emissions, noise and vibration during the use phase, etc. Equally important is the introduction of design for environment dealing with: the use of ecologically sound materials, renewable materials, avoidance of hazardous materials and optimized recyclability at the end of life of the vehicles.

The RAVEL project is aiming for a workbench consisting of a set of tools that through improved design for environment enables a significant improvement of the eco-efficiency for railway vehicles during their entire lifecycle. The project consists of five principal tasks.

1. User requirements and state-of-the-art for rail vehicle design support;
   The user and market requirements and the expectations on the RAVEL project are investigated. Studies are carried out on the state-of-the-art of Design for Environment (DfE) in the railway and similar branches of industry.
2. Methodologies and Tools specification;
   The elements of the workbench are specified and a virtual prototype is developed and tested. An implementation concept is developed to determine a hardware and software platform.
3. Knowledge Engineering;
   A rail vehicle specific Knowledge System (KS) is developed, tested and implemented in the RAVEL workbench.
4. Validation and demonstration:
   The workbench is demonstrated to the endusers and validated by them through application of the workbench in real-life development projects.
5. Dissemination, standardisation and exploitation planning;
   The results of RAVEL are disseminated and an input to standardisation organisations is given. The exploitation after the duration of the project is planned.

The duration of the project is three years, from November 1998 to October 2001. At the moment task 1 has been completed and task 2 is in its final stage. During the first year the project team has developed an information platform and a defined a set of environmental performance indicators that will be used to describe, measure and evaluate the environmental performance of a train. Task 3 is planned to start in March 2000 and includes detailed specification of the RAVEL workbench (both the data structure and the functions) as well as collection and implementation of data in the RAVEL knowledge system.

The environmental performance indicators form the core of RAVEL. They should be used to describe and assess environmental properties when ordering and designing new trains. With a common language (in form of indicators and data formats) the communication between operators and vehicle suppliers, within the railway manufacturers and between vehicle manufacturers and their sub-suppliers, can be facilitated and improved. This will lead to increased eco-efficiency of the new rail vehicles.

In order to lay the basis for a robust and maintainable future RAVEL software the models developed in the project will be documented in EXPRESS. This will also ensure that the ideas of the environmental experts in the project are maintained in the software. And, maybe the most important thing of all, by using a standardized language we open the door for everybody in the industry who would like to use or interact with RAVEL.

RAVEL is a Brite EuRam project partly (50%) financed by the European Commission. For more information about the content and the results of the project have a look at:
http://www.ravel-project.de