Sener has undertaken a significant number of innovative Infrastructures and Transport projects. These include important High Speed rail projects with the Administrator of Railway Infrastructures-Adif, such as the Madrid – Barcelona lines, whose trains are already running at 300 km/hour. These are state-of-the-art infrastructures that tackle new problems and where safety is of the highest priority. Sener began working with Adif on two studies: one to characterize the effect of flying ballast, and another on the very short-term prediction and behavior of crosswind on high speed lines. These studies led to two key developments: the crosswind prediction and detection system and the Aerotraviesa®, sleeper prototype to minimize flying ballast. Aerotraviesa® is patented by Adif, CIDAUT foundation, Universidad Politécnica de Madrid (UPM) and Sener. Although it is a very recent development, several rail authorities have shown their interest in Aerotraviesa®, with Russia, Czech Republic and Turkey planning to build High Speed lines in the near future and are already interested in using this system.
These new projects—using Spanish technology and spearheaded by public entities like Adif, companies such as Sener and institutions like the UPM and the CIDAUT Foundation—continue to break new technological ground in the global rail sector.