Engineering Services

ENGINEERING SERVICES

We provide the complete array of engineering services to address railway design and operational issues. Our expert team of in-house engineers and on-call associates provides positive solutions with speed and agility.

Project Engineering and Management

We give you the flexibility to manage your engineering project workload and respond to emerging tasks whilst maintaining your staffing policies and levels. Our engineers work within the engineering and project management teams of rolling stock manufacturers, UK train operators and ROSCOs, component OEMs as well as overseas operators and suppliers.

Full services

Mechanical, Electrical and Software Engineering Projects

We cover all disciplines including mechanical, electrical and software engineering on new and legacy rolling stock and engineering projects. These range from turnkey projects delivering a complete solution, providing a team to achieve a specific deliverable or working as part of a larger project team.

Full services

Feasibility Studies

We have considerable experience in carrying out feasibility studies on proposed changes or innovations. Our approach is tailored to meet your specific requirements.

Full services

Due to their nature feasibility study details are commercially sensitive so no specific reference projects are listed. However, we can help with studies for all types of rolling stock and infrastructure.

Railway Systems Engineering

Systems engineering integrates the multiple engineering disciplines required to deliver a modern railway engineering project. In our experience, complex projects require logical approaches to ensure that the delivered system provides all – and only – the desired outcomes.

We define a clear and concise set of system requirements needs from the outset, whilst identifying a clear focus on roles and responsibilities. These are rigorously applied through a defined life-cycle to ensure ownership is known and traceability guaranteed from input to result. Our skills in managing the complex interconnections of the various system elements ensures we successfully integrate the contributions from multiple and varied disciplines.

EN 50126 V life-cycle and bespoke project life-cycle structures

In every AEGIS project, requirements are succinctly defined and devolved to the sub-system levels with traceability both to the input requirement and to the validation activity that proves it has been implemented.

Whether following the tried and tested V life-cycle of EN 50126 or any one of the numerous bespoke project life-cycle structures, we ensure the developed system fulfils its defined requirements at each level of the cycle.

Traction Systems

Our team of specialist traction engineers is second to none in the UK rail industry. Originating from a background of traction system design, from the days of GTO thyristors through to the latest IGBT drives, our engineers have been responsible for the design and development of all aspects of traction drives – system design, performance, inverter control, power electronics, traction motor and power module design, cooling, EMC and safety cases.

This deep knowledge supports our involvement in preparing the safety justifications for many new build and refurbishment traction projects, as well the introduction of regenerative braking to existing fleets, through a sound understanding of the compatibility and safety requirements that must be met to allow safe integration of the new or modified rolling stock and the railway infrastructure.

Full services

Our range of skills in traction covers

Structural Engineering

For many years AEGIS has been delivering structural assessments for its clients in the railway industry. Our clients include Alstom, Hitachi Rail, Sperry Rail, ROSCOs and TOCs plus many more. AEGIS employs a large team of engineers and works with many associates who specialise in structural assessment. We use the market reference Finite Element Analysis (FEA) package Ansys to perform the structural analysis.

Our approach and services

Our services ranges from simple hand calculations of a single bracket to FEA of a full vehicle body. We start working with our clients by fully understanding the scope of work and their requirements. We then perform a load case study to define the mandatory and operational load requirements. At the initial results stage AEGIS informs the client on the pass/fail outcome of the analysis. If required, we suggest design changes to address any problem areas. The optimised design is revaluated, and a structural report delivered to the client. We also collaborate with other companies so can provide a comprehensive material testing service.

Finite Element Analysis (FEA) is our main tool for assessing structural integrity of more complex designs. We either build the design from available drawings, in-house measurements or use 3D CAD models.  The mathematical representation of the design is then subject to relevant loading and boundary conditions to extract stresses, deformations and joint forces. We provide a detailed structural report at the end of each analysis.

Design Optimisation is to help our clients arrive at the optimal design. When the analysis of the design identifies opportunity for improvements or a failed initial assessment, we endeavour to provide the customer with a solution to the problem. This way we can work quickly and efficiently within the given timescales. Our software can be set up to use an iterative process to optimise the design for weight, stiffness and stress reduction.

Fatigue assessment is performed for most of the structural assessments carried out by AEGIS. We use a cumulative damage approach as specified in the industry recognised standards such as BS 7608 or BS EN 1993-1-9 to ensure compliance.

Modal analysis is required to be performed to derive fundamental modes of vibration of the analysed equipment. By carrying out modal analysis we check whether the design is sufficiently decoupled or separated from the modes of vibration of the body structure and suspension, to avoid any undesirable responses.

Bolted Joint analysis is usually undertaken by post-processing the FEA results, extracting the bolt forces from the FEA software. A set of calculations is then performed to check the joint integrity. Nonlinear contact modelling between components increases the accuracy and allows capture of the physical behaviour of the joint.

A few recent examples of projects we have undertaken for our clients include: