Flexible Optimal Model and Algorithm for Track Utilization in High-speed Railway Stations

Abstract

Abstract Track utilization is the most important technical operation in high-speed railway stations. It is an effective way to take flexible management based on dispatchers’ decision preferences into consideration for making track utilization plans to relieve the influence caused by unmeasurable unstructured factors. Thus, based on the flexible management concept and taking the flexible optimal for track utilization in high-speed railway stations as the object, time and space occupation safety trajectories of arrival routes, departure routes and tracks are all analysed. Then, taking the following constraints into consideration—minimum safety time intervals for various routes and tracks occupation, space-time arc occupation and decision-makers’ preferences—a flexible optimal model for track utilization in high-speed railway stations is established to maximize its balance and robustness and to minimize its volatility at the same time. Further, a flexible optimal solution based on a simulated annealing algorithm is designed to make a safety track utilization plan in high-speed railway stations integrating the dispatchers’ decision preference. The results from the experiments show that the proposed methodology can effectively make satisfied safety track utilization plans based on decision-makers’ preferences, which can improve its balance and robustness level significantly. Meanwhile, its volatility can be reduced as much as possible caused by flexible management based on artificial intervention to ensure the relative stability of the plan.