BIM Applications to Transport Infrastructures Assessment. IFC development for railways.

Abstract

Transport infrastructures such as roads, railways and runways are under increased traffic loading and their rehabilitation has to be performed in an efficient way, structurally and financially. In this process, monitoring of structural and functional capacity of transport infrastructures using nondestructive tests is performed in a systematic way. It is important to take advantages of these measurements to plan a future rehabilitation. Using the BIM methodology, it is possible to obtain a model that, besides containing the three-dimensional graphic representation of the pavement or rail track and its physical and mechanical characteristics, also has information regarding the structural condition resulting from the continuous inspections. The authors developed case studies of Building Information Modelling (BIM) applied to roads, runways, and railways. In the road and airport pavements cases, the integration of structural capacity in the modelling was studied. Regarding the railway’s cases, a construction of a transition zone was addressed and its behavior during the first three years after entering in service was modelled. For both roads and railways, rehabilitation of existing infrastructures was modelled using BIM. To minimize compatibility problems between the various software based on this methodology, a standard format called IFC (Industry Foundation Classes) has been developed. This allows the user to have access to all the information without being limited to the source software of the model. In this paper IFC has been evolving in railways. Therefore, basic criteria that allow IFC to store all the essential information for the railway design were developed in this study. Their implementation is presented in a case study of a railway structural assessment. The main troubleshooting and consideration reached so far are presented herein, identifying the advantages of BIM approach.