Award Data

Today’s prevailing methods of visual track inspection tend to be expensive, disruptive to operations, and have potential to be less thorough than preferred. To help address these issues, machine vision technology emerged in the rail sector over a decade ago; however, the technology has not achieved its expected potential due to the uncontrolled nature of rail environments. Recent findings have s ...

Most research on scour assessment has traditionally focused on developing best-fit or envelope equations to estimate the maximum scour depths from physical experiments in a laboratory environment. However, obtaining an accurate estimate is always a challenge due to numerous uncertainties in the actual riverine or coastal environment. With advances in new surveying technologies and growing computat ...

A newly proposed combination of high-strength weathering steel sheet with Ultra-High Performance Concrete (UHPC) to leverage the benefits of both emerging technologies. The combined system offers benefits over traditional orthotropic steel decks and existing concrete or UHPC deck solutions, both of which offer high up-front costs in fabrication or forming. The resulting composite structure provide ...

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project will investigate the value of a quantitative risk assessment tool for management of geohazard threats to pipelines.Phase I will determine data sources for quantitative risk assessment to support management and decision-making needs of pipeline industry stakeholders; identify the potential market for such a tool; identify a study locati ...

Crushed aggregates play an important role in the safe and reliable operation of our nation’s railroad infrastructure.Over time, aggregates become fouled by finer particles, and if not monitored and remedied, this fouling can lead to catastrophic accidents such as train derailments.A handheld inspection system that can accurately perform a quantitative measure of aggregate gradation and degree of ...

Founded in 2004, the mission of Wi-Tronix is to improve railway safety, operational efficiency, and service reliability, in real-time. We are the preferred connected solutions provider to over one-third of all locomotives in North America. Wi-Tronix is proposing to leverage our expertise in developing and making commercially available AI based technologies for autonomous highway-rail grade crossin ...

The objective of the proposed Phase I Department of Transportation/Federal Highway Administration SBIR program is to develop a sprayable highway paint to communicate vehicle-to-everything (V2X) safety messages between infrastructure, vehicles and pedestrians. During Phase I, NanoSonic will work with Virginia Tech antenna designers and the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) to design and ...

The objective of this SBIR program is to demonstrate the use of patterned radar‐reflective roadway paint and marking tape to communicate safety messages from roadway infrastructure to vehicles and drivers. NanoSonic will work with transportation engineers in the Virginia Tech Transportation Institute (VTTI) and radar design and system engineers in the Virginia Tech Hume Center. Radar‐reflectiv ...

Identification of defects and incipient failures before the breakdown of the equipment is recognized as an important maintenance activity in the railroad industry to improve efficiency and safety of the operation. It is well known that a proper implementation of condition monitoring improves the overall equipment reliability and reduces unexpected field failures. Traction motor faults can result i ...

This small business will develop an open-source toolkit that states and networks can use to calculate metrics that support and inform decision making by postsecondary students. This toolkit (TEAPOT) will include several components to support implementation including data requirements, a field guide with instructional materials and technical tools to help partners to securely and ethically combine ...