The overall objective of CARBODIN is to develop innovative and affordable solutions for advanced Car body shells manufacturing and lightweight material strategies for railways, innovative doors and train modularity, contributing to S2R IP1 strategy. By this, CARBODIN will highly contribute to the next generation of passenger trains that will be lighter and more energy and cost efficient than the current ones. An important step for that will be the use of composite technologies, which still face barriers for full implementation such as their high costs. Another step is the modular design of interiors and low-cost manufacturing of vehicles parts.
In that context the following S2R Technical Demonstrators will play a key role in CARBODIN project:
- New generation of car body shells (TD 1.3) using composite materials for significantly lighter vehicles that carry more passengers within the same axle load constraints, use less energy and have reduced impact on rail infrastructure.
- Innovative doors (TD 1.6) aiming to move away from current access solutions based on honeycomb and aluminium or steel sheets, towards new lightweight composite structures to improve energy consumption, noise and thermal transmission and including improved access for people with reduced mobility.
- Train modularity in use (TD 1.7) with new modular concepts for train interiors that allow operators to adapt the vehicle layout to the actual usage conditions, and will improve passenger flows, thus optimising both the capacity of the vehicle and dwell times.
CARBODIN will contribute to enhancing the attractiveness and competitiveness of the European railway system by bringing innovative car body, doors and interiors manufacturing strategies, user-friendly and accessible doors and their neighbourhoods, tools for modular interiors and virtual immersive interior design and novel human-machine interactions for innovative driving cabins.