The Initial Development of Infrastructure Switches & Crossings Module of the Universal Cost Model 2.0

The Universal Cost Model (UCM) is a comparison framework originally developed in the EU S2R project Roll2Rail, that accounts for all aspects of running gear innovations that influence the whole railway system's Life Cycle Costs. It is a simulation-based framework enabling the comparison of a reference vehicle against an innovative one, showcasing the differential costs and benefits of said innovation. In the recently completed EU project NEXTGEAR, the UCM 2.0 was re-developed to address shortcomings of the original version, in particular the user friendliness but also refining some the theoretical foundation in aspects of wheel and rail wear, ballast damage and track settlement. One key aspect, not present in the original version and developed from scratch in UCM 2.0 was the addition of a switches and crossings (S&C) metal parts calculation to the infrastructure module, otherwise focused on plain line ballast settlement and rail degradation through wear and RCF. This paper describes the modelling work done to show how the driving forces on track damage were derived from a number of representative cases to achieve a simpler calculation process for the user. This enables the UCM 2.0 user to carry out the calculation without the need for access to detailed expert knowledge on S&C simulation.