A statistical study on long freight trains equipped with radio communication within Shift2Rail

Paper reports the main results of a systematic study on longitudinal train dynamics (LTD) of long freight trains equipped with radio communication. It is divided in two parts: the first addresses the global sensitivity analysis aiming to find the most relevant parameters that, with their associated uncertainty, mainly affect the LTD of coupled trains, independently by the train length or train operation. The second part studies the LTD of classic freight trains in Germany (i.e. with one Traction Unit -TU- at the beginning of the train), considering the variation of the parameters identified during the sensitivity analysis. Finally, several train-consists with two up to four TU and having train length up to 1500 m are found to be as safe as the classic trains and therefore can put in service, as long as the LTD is concerned, allowing a relevant increase of efficiency.