Railway equipment

Tender description

The University of Leeds is undertaking a procurement exercise to appoint a contractor to design, supply, install and maintain specialist mechanical and electrical equipment for 2 major rail research projects. The 2 projects under this notice are for: 1) Infrastructure Testing Facility (ITF); and 2) Vehicle Testing Facility (VTF). The delivery of the projects will involve relationships with the existing University of Leeds Estate, Academics, Design Consultants, Leeds City Council, HS2 and Network Rail. The University will undertake an OJEU Competitive Dialogue Procedure for the equipment. The high speed rail Infrastructure Testing Facility (ITF) is an outdoor structure for the testing of railway track components and earth embankments. The testing rig will incorporate hydraulic actuators located on a reaction beam, to apply downward dynamic vertical loads onto stationary embankment structures. The reaction beam will be 10 m long and its vertical position changeable between heights of 0-3 m (via a guide and motive system), to accommodate the testing of different embankment heights. Once locked in position, vertical forces will be generated by actuators spaced at 0,65 m centres along its length, meaning the beam must have sufficient vertical stiffness to allow for the precise and accurate control of actuators. The actuators will mimic a high speed moving load by operating in sequence according to specifications (frequency and force). The reaction beam will be supported by columns at each end. The frame-to-beam connections require design, however the columns and their foundations will be designed separately by an alternative consultant as part of the civils work contract. In-built craneage capability will be required to lift 5-10 t loads onto the embankment samples. Control systems will be required for the crane, frame movement and hydraulic actuators. A hydraulic power unit, piping and cooling is also required, the housing and service duct work will be supplied by the civils contract for the hydraulic power unit. Data acquisition and cabling is needed to monitor future test samples. The Vehicle Testing Facility (VTF) is a full scale roller rig for the testing of rail vehicles. The delivery of the VTF is expected to comprise 2 stages. Stage 1 will consist of the assembly with which to excite the wheels on the vehicle leading bogie through track displacements representative of those encountered on the network. Stage 2 will deliver an equivalent assembly to be located under the trailing bogie of the vehicle on test. Prospective bidders will be required to submit proposals for the design, supply, installation and maintenance of Stage 1 and proposals for the design of Stage 2. The wheels of the vehicle will each be supported on a table mounted roller that has sufficient kinematic freedom to replicate design changes in track geometry along with irregularities. The tables must also be able to accommodate change in wheelset and bogie centre distances along with change in gauge. It envisaged that table motion will be hydraulically controlled. The roller table — ground reaction connection will also form part of the design. Vehicle body motion due to cornering and traction will be provided through compliant reaction frames that will permit the body to respond to the rail inputs. The roller tables will be mounted on a substantial inertial mass. The specification of this mass and its geometry will form part of the civils design, however, the installation of this component will be undertaken by a third party and will be installed as part of a civils work contract. Integrated control of the traction motors and VTF is essential. It is proposed that the wheelsets be driven by either the on-vehicle traction system or in the case of a free running wheelset, by the rig mounted traction drives. This provides the facility to accelerate / decelerate the bogie / vehicle inline with its operational duty cycle. A data acquisition system will also be provided that is capable of recording a representative range of vehicle responses. The delivery will also provide the hydraulic power pack and pipework for the VTF. This power pack (HPU) may be shared with ITF but at this early stage this cannot be guaranteed due to adjacencies of the buildings on the masterplan for the new site.