Abstract
The safety and continuality of the railway network are guaranteed by carrying out a lot of maintenance interventions on the railway track. One of the most important of these actions is tamping, where railway infrastructure managers focus on optimizing tamping activities in ballasted tracks to reduce the maintenance cost. To this end, this article presents a mixed integer linear programming model of the Tamping Planning Problem (TPP) and investigates the effect of track segmentation method on the optimal solution by three scenarios. It uses an opportunistic maintenance technique to plan tamping actions. This technique clusters many tamping works through a time period to reduce the track possession cost as much as possible. CPLEX 12.6.3 is used in order to solve the TPP instances exactly. The results show that the total number of machine preparations increases by increasing the number of track segments. It is also found that the total costs increase by 6.1% and 9.4% during scenarios 2 and 3, respectively. Moreover, it is better to consider the whole railway track as a single segment (as in scenarios 1) that consists of a set of sections during the tamping planning in order to obtain the optimal maintenance cost. Doi: 10.28991/cej-2021-03091774 Full Text: PDF
Highlights
Tamping planning is an important issue in railway infrastructure maintenance planning and can profoundly influence in the funding aspect and operational flexibility of a railway track
It can be concluded that it is important to consider the whole railway track as a single segment that consists of a big number of sections during the tamping planning to obtain the minimum total cost
An optimization model of the Tamping Planning Problem (TPP) is proposed and the effect of track segmentation method on the optimal solution is investigated by three scenarios
Summary
Tamping planning is an important issue in railway infrastructure maintenance planning and can profoundly influence in the funding aspect and operational flexibility of a railway track. The management and optimization of tamping works over time become a vital challenge to the infrastructure managers in order to reduce maintenance costs (Andrade & Teixeira 2011 [2]; Daddow et al 2020 [3]; Heinicke et al 2015 [4]; Letot et al 2016 [5]; Macke & Higuchi 2007 [6]; Miwa 2002 [7]). In this problem, the studied railway track is assumed to divide into a number of equal sections with their private conditions (i.e. standard deviation of longitudinal level). The optimal solution represents the optimum tamping schedule that the infrastructure manager aims to obtain
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
