Automated and Cost Effective Railway Infrastructure Maintenance

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Automated and Cost Effective Railway
Infrastructure Maintenance
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Automated and cost effective maintenance

• Aim increase railway capacity and efficiency
  through automated and high speed maintenance
  technique leading to zero possessions and a 24hr
  railway

Required identification of maintenance
activities with most impact on capacity
InnoTrack project identified top maintenance
and renewal costs
Priorities for innovation
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Project size

• Expect approx 3m EU funding if successful
• Total project budget approx 6m
• Equivalent man effort 405.5 man months
• Need to look at breakdown of resource amongst sub
  projects

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Project structure

• Core group/co-ordination group
• Composed of SP leaders
• Business group/Steering group
• Customer Infrastructure managers
• Network Rail ProRail
• DB Banverket
• SNCF RFI

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Interested parties

• ADIF
• ARUP
• DeltaRail
• MER MEC
• Ansaldo STS
• Corus
• RFI
• UNIFE
• ProRail
• Roke Manor
• SNCF
• RFI
• Banverket

• Cybula
• DB
• ESR
• Univeristy of Essex
• Univeristy of Huddersfield
• Lloyds Register
• Lulea Rail Research Centre
• Uni Newcastle
• Omnicomm
• Uni Birmingham
• Network Rail

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Current project status

• Initial Consortium building meeting-brainstorming
  Utrecht 19th May 2009
• Second consortium building-project content
  planning meeting - Brussels 8th July 2009
• Core group meeting Utrecht 17th July 2009
• Next full consortium meeting September 2009

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Automated and cost effective maintenance
principle tasks
Design of modular infrastructure and components
machine replacement
Analysis of current maintenance activities
procedures and results
Maintenance database
Automated and cost effective maintenance
High speed inspection
Automatic planning systems and neural networks
for optimum correction method
Innovative maintenance methods and vehicles
High speed maintenance
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Automated and cost effective maintenance
principle tasks

• Design of modular infrastructure and components
• common interfaces, size and shape
• machine locatable and replaceable
• Analysis of current maintenance activities
• Does the current structure of maintenance
  activities apply for automation?
• Automatic planning systems and development of
  neural networks for optimum decision making
• Automated planning systems and neural networks to
  monitor past activities and optimise future
  maintenance activities to have the strongest
  chance of success
• High speed maintenance
• Innovation to increase speed of maintenance
  activities, such as tamping and grinding
• Target to achieve maintenance activities at near
  to line speed
• High speed inspection
• Building upon inspection work in Innotrack and
  INTERAIL
• Innovative vehicles and equipment for carrying
  out maintenance
• Robotics and novel machines

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Project structure
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Maintenance flow diagram
Reactive Maintenance
Planned Maintenance/ Servicing
SP2 Infrastructure designed for automated
maintenance
SP6 High speed inspection
SP4 Automated timetabling and planning
SP5/SP7 Techniques and vehicles for automated
maintenance
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Cross-overs and interactions
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Reduce unplanned unavailability
100 24 hrs
availability
unplanned unavailability
planned unavailability
possessions and inspection slot

• Goal reduce number and size of planned
  unavailability possessions and slots.
• To reach this goal, study possibilities to
• reduce preparation and withdrawal time
• increase speed of activity
• only plan maintenance when necessary or useful
• combine activities
• less inspection train paths (fault or condition
  detection in asset itself, or monitor from
  service train)
• Spin-off of developing solutions will be
• insight in performance of machines and
  components, and suggestion for their design

ACTIVITY (Maintenance or inspection)
prepare
withdraw from track
possession or slot length
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Ideas for achieving these actions

• Reduce preparation and withdrawal time
• longer possessions may save multiple preparation
  and withdrawal actions
• logistics optimisation, prepare as much as
  possible before possession starts
• optimise coordination between
• use measurement train info to set parameters for
  maintenance, rather than use initial measurement
  run of maintenance machine
• Increasing speed of activity
• faster maintenance
• faster inspection and monitoring
• Only plan maintenance when necessary or useful
• carefully analyse condition monitoring
  information to determine where maintenance is
  needed
• dont take fixed maintenance intervals for
  granted
• Combination of activities
• two activities in one possession saves a
  possession
• Less inspection train paths
• shift from measurement train to fault or
  condition detection in asset itself, or monitor
  from service train

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SP1 - Manage

• Inter-operability of new equipment and techniques
  with others in the project and existing (and
  planned) standards.
• Interested parties
• NR Delta Rail
• UNIFE University of Birmingham
• Ansaldo
• Comments
• Need to define what databases/international
  projects will be connected/made use of during
  project
• Define structure for all tasks, using PAS-55
  framework.

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SP2 Component design

• A better understanding of degradation will
  improve design.
• Modular design and components specifically
  designed for ease of maintainability.
• Equipment standards European interoperability
  same components and maintenance equipment can be
  utilised across Europe
• SP2.1 Overall technologies that can be used in
  identification and standardisation, reference
  points (eg RFID tagging, colouration of
  components for easy identification by image
  analysis)
• SP2.2 Identification of components that are
  incompatible with maintenance (eg points and
  ballise with grinding)
• SP2.3 Track designed for automated maintenance
  and renewal
• SP2.4 Signalling equipment designed for
  automated maintenance and renewal
• SP2.5 OHL/3rd rail designed for automated
  maintenance and renewal

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SP3 - Decide

• Key issues
• Time of maintenance, kind of maintenance,
  sustainability of maintenance.
• Grading the asset. Performance of the asset.
• Location of maintenance
• Prediction and prevent. Understanding what is
  the effect of not carrying out the maintenance
• Expected maintenance (degradation) vs. unexpected
  maintenance (fault/failure).
• Alert management.
• Optimal maintenance.
• Degraded mode operation. (Operate under speed
  restriction)
• Criteria for decision making. Business
  objectives.
• Priority.
• Identification of interacting corrective actions
  eg. Tamping vs wet beds
• Potential sub-projects
• SP3.1 Understanding asset performance and
  criteria to fulfil business objectives (cost
  function).
• SP3.2 Asset maintenance strategies and
  informing work force (communication).
• SP3.3 Identification of different corrective
  action methods for each track fault/current basis
  for decision making when have multiple choices
• SP3.4 Fault/degradation detection, diagnosis
  and identification.
• SP3.5 Constraint satisfaction, decision making
  toolbox

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SP4 - Plan

• Key issues
• Strategic view of our actions (maintenance and
  possession vs speed limit and continued
  operation)
• Planning of maintenance within the timetable
• Fewer possessions and in-service measurement/high
  speed maintenance
• Potential sub-projects
• SP4.1 Resource utilization (machine mainly)
• SP4.2 Access planning (possession, in-service)
• SP4.3 Optimal strategy.

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SP5 - Work

• Key issues
• Categorisation of work.
• Matrix of different types of work. Existing
  solutions, what activities are currently
  automated/mechanised, state of the art in terms
  of high speed. As is, and to be.
• Potential sub-projects
• SP5.1 State of the art in current maintenance
  techniques.
• SP5.2 Identify gaps in technology and
  prioritise and routemap the development of the
  required maintenance techniques.

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SP6 - Measure

• Key issues
• Existing in-service geometry measurement from DB
  (with limited functionality). There is little
  post processing, but some data visualisation.
  From this train a complete view of the track is
  obtained every 3 days. NR (and others) have
  specialised trains, this generally provides data
  on a monthly basis. Large amount of time
  required to process data and visualise.
• UIC working group on track condition monitoring.
• Ensuring that the context (meta-data) of the data
  collected is retained (e.g. when, what happened
  before/after, how it was collected, etc.).
• Signalling data can be used to look at track
  usage.
• Communication protocols getting the best use
  out of the data (InteGRail)
• New sensor type is not to be developed as part of
  this project can use sensor development from
  other projects eg INTERAIL. But project might
  identify where new sensor/measurement technology
  is required eg Track stiffness measurement.
• Need to ensure measurement/success of work
  carried out will be vital for decision making
• Potential sub-projects
• SP6.1 state-of-the-art review of what is being
  measured and how. Determine the most appropriate
  measurement technique for each infrastructure
  problem.
• SP6.2 data representation (meta-data), levels
  of data collection.
• SP6.3 pre-processing and automatic data
  visualisation.
• SP6.4 data integration coordination of data.
  Co-ordinating data
• SP6.5 validation of maintenance actions.

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SP7 - Machine

• Development of concepts for the vehicles or
  devices that will carry out the maintenance
  activities, incorporating the outputs from
  SP2-SP6
• Human factor issues and de-skilling work force
• Modular maintenance machines with ability to
  couple compatible maintenance modules on to one
  train, to reduce timetable impact.
• SP7.1 Human factors and reliability.
  Optimisation of automation removal of human
  error vs deskilled workforce. System reliability
  and contingency. Eg. what is the impact of a
  failure in the automated planning system.
• SP7.2 Grouping of maintenance activities that
  can potentially be combined into one machine, eg
  continuous maintenance grinding, tamping, etc.
  Discrete/stationary activities cutting and
  rewelding track sections, etc. And
  recommendations for machine design.

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SP8 Cost/Capacity impact

• SP8.1 Cost of existing maintenance activities.
• SP8.2 Cost of Availability (impact), Capacity
  (train paths), Safety (loss of life), Quality
  (asset life improvement. Cost of inspection.
  Cost of maintenance vs new build/additional track
  to improve availability.
• SP8.3 Cost function for optimisation.
  Different IMs will have different cost functions
  (or weighting of parameters in the cost
  function). Innotrack/ERRAC (system cost). LICB
  UIC Group.

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Questions