Reducing the environmental impact of rail transportation

The environmental impact of the research project focussed on acoustic properties of lightweight structures for use in rail vehicles is investigated. The Environmental impact of rail transport is compared to that of road and air transport. The environmental impact of different trains are then compared using published data in the form of standardised Environmental Product Declarations (EPD), summarising Life Cycle Analysis (LCA) results. Since the EPDs are made for a certain train in a specified operation on a specified market, it is difficult to compare the environmental impact for trains in different types of operations. In spite of this it is clear that comfort requirements such as acoustics drives weight increase, and that a decrease of total train weight does have a significant impact on the energy consumption. Also the mode of electricity generation for the train operation has an impact. There is a large difference in environmental impact between markets with hydropower generated electricity and those who have to rely on electricity generated by fossil fuels. The conclusion is that research on how to improve acoustic properties, such as sound transmission loss, with a minimum increase of weight, does contribute to making an environmental friendly mode of transport more competitive compared to road and air transportQC 20160711Centre for ECO2 Vehicle Desig