Developing an Enhanced Short-Range Railroad Track Condition Prediction Model for Optimal Maintenance Scheduling

Peng Xu,Quanxin Sun,Rengkui Liu,Ye Li,Chuanjun Jia

doi:10.1155/2015/796171

Peng Xu, Quanxin Sun + Show 3 more

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https://doi.org/10.1155/2015/796171

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Abstract

As railroad infrastructure becomes older and older and rail transportation is developing towards higher speed and heavier axle, the risk to safe rail transport and the expenses for railroad maintenance are increasing. The railroad infrastructure deterioration (prediction) model is vital to reducing the risk and the expenses. A short-range track condition prediction method was developed in our previous research on railroad track deterioration analysis. It is intended to provide track maintenance managers with two or three months of track condition in advance to schedule track maintenance activities more smartly. Recent comparison analyses on track geometrical exceptions calculated from track condition measured with track geometry cars and those predicted by the method showed that the method fails to provide reliable condition for some analysis sections. This paper presented the enhancement to the method. One year of track geometry data for the Jiulong-Beijing railroad from track geometry cars was used to conduct error analyses and comparison analyses. Analysis results imply that the enhanced model is robust to make reliable predictions. Our in-process work on applying those predicted conditions for optimal track maintenance scheduling is discussed in brief as well.

Highlights

Transportation systems play a critical role in development of society and economy
As railroad infrastructure becomes older and older and rail transportation is developing towards higher speed and heavier axle, the risk to safe rail transport and the expenses for railroad infrastructure maintenance are increasing
The railroad infrastructure deterioration model is vital to reducing the risk and the expenses

Summary

Introduction

Transportation systems play a critical role in development of society and economy. Railway system accounted for the largest part of national freight ton-miles, for example, 38.2% in 2005 in USA [1] and 49.70% in 2005 in China [2]. Railroad infrastructure as a base element of railway system has great and direct influences on safety and cost efficiency of rail transport. It is believed that as railroad infrastructure becomes older and older, the risk to safe transport and the expenses for preserving the infrastructure will increase. When the infrastructure grows up over a certain age, the risk and the expenses will increase exponentially [3]. The last ten years (as a small portion of the entire infrastructure evolution process) has seen linearly increasing expenses per mile for class I railroad infrastructure of USA, as illustrated by Figure 1. The recent development of rail transportation towards higher speed and heavier axle load is believed to increase the risk and expenses

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