Verified Train Controllers for the Federal Railroad Administration Train Kinematics Model: Balancing Competing Brake and Track Forces

Abstract

Automated train control improves railroad operation by safeguarding the motion of trains while increasing efficiency by enabling motion within a safe envelope. Train controllers decide when to slow trains down to avoid collisions with other trains on the track, stay inside movement authorities, and navigate slopes, curves, and tunnels safely. These systems must base their decisions on detailed motion models to guarantee the absence of overshoot of the movement authority (safety) and limit undershoot (efficiency). This article is the first to formally verify the safety of the Federal Railroad Administration freight train kinematics model with all its relevant forces and parameters, including track slope and curvature, air brake propagation, and resistive forces as computed by the Davis equation. Due to the significant competing influence of these parameters on train stopping distances, even designing train controllers is a nontrivial control challenge, which we solve using formal verification. For increased generality at reduced verification effort, we verify symbolic mathematical generalizations of the train control models and subsequently apply efficient uniform substitutions to obtain verification results for physical train control models.