Hållbara spårvägar

Sammanfattning: The Swedish city of Uppsala is growing and will be expanded. To manage the increase in traffic, a tramway is being planned. It is vital to make the construction and the tramway tracks sustainable. This is explored to study carbon dioxide emissions related to tramway track materials as well as their wear and service life. This project investigates sustainability, the tramway track constituents, rail steel, the rails' wear, rail surface treatments that could minimize wear and increase service life, materials surrounding the rails, and the production of the most used materials in tramway tracks. A literature study is conducted to compare different options for materials and treatments. The municipality of Uppsala's climate goals, technical standards and regulations, articles and studies about the mentioned topics, amongst other sources, are considered and compared. The results include a rough estimation of the material consumption and carbon dioxide emissions. Asphalt tracks have the lowest emissions of the different surrounding material options. The steel consumption and carbon dioxide emissions for the vignole rails are less than for grooved rails and the concrete consumption for grass tracks is slightly less compared to edilon tracks. It is also possible to switch from regular perlitic rail steel to bainitic rail steel when needed. Laser hardening, UNSM, and thermal plasma hardening decrease the rails' wear (rates) considering increased surface hardness.