Integer Programming to Optimize Tamping in Railway Tracks as Preventive Maintenance
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 138, Issue 1
Abstract
In the area with railway engineering, scheduling preventive maintenance actions is an important issue for engineers and railway administrations because the optimization of maintenance actions at a preventive level allows maintenance costs to be reduced during the life cycle of the track, with the guarantee of its geometrical quality. This paper describes a model designed to optimize the tamping operations in ballasted tracks as preventive maintenance. The model, formulated as mixed 0–1 linear program, considers real technical aspects as constraints, which is a novel approach in the optimization of track maintenance over time. Global optimization is used to predict and to schedule tamping, taking into account four aspects: the evolution of the track degradation over time; the track layout; the dependency of the track quality recovery on the track quality at the moment of the maintenance operation; the track quality limits that depend on the maximum permissible train speed. Computational experience with two track stretches of the Portuguese Northern Railway Line is included to highlight the efficacy of the proposed methodology.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
Acknowledgments
The present work has been funded by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology (FCT). The first author also recognizes FCT for the financial support provided by the research grant UNSPECIFIEDSFRH/BD/25020/2005. The authors gratefully acknowledge the Portuguese Railway Administration (REFER) for the collaboration and access to real data and also the support of the project “HSR-LIFE Development of tools for HSR lifecycle costs estimation for track design and maintenance management system” of the MIT-Portugal Program—Transportation Systems Area.
References
Barbera, F., Schneider, H., and Watson, E. (1999). “A condition based maintenance model for a two-unit series system.” Eur. J. Oper. Res., 116(2), 281–290.
Barros, L. L. (1998). “The optimization of repair decision using life-cycle cost parameters.” IMA J. Manag. Math., 9(4), 403–413.
Brooke, A., Kendrick, D., Meeraus, A., Raman, R., and Borris, S. (1998). GAMS a user’s guide, GAMS Development Corp., New York.
Budai, G., Dekker, R., and Nicolai, R. P. (2008). “Maintenance and production: A review of planning models.” Chapter 13, Complex system maintenance handbook, D. N. P. Murthy and K. A. H. Kobbacy, eds., Springer, London, 321–344.
Budai, G., Huisman, D., and Dekker, R. (2006). “Scheduling preventive railway maintenance activities.” J. Oper. Res. Soc., 57(9), 1035–1044.
Cacchiani, V., Caprara, A., and Toth, P. (2010). “Scheduling extra freight trains on railway networks.” Transp. Res. Part B, 44(2), 215–231.
Castro, I. T. (2009). “A model of imperfect preventive maintenance with dependent failure modes.” Eur. J. Oper. Res., 196(1), 217–224.
European Committee for Standardization (CEN). (2008). “Railway applications—Track—Track geometry quality—Part 5: Geometric quality levels.” EN13848-5, Brussels, Belgium.
Gorman, M. F., and Kanet, J. J. (2010). “Formulation and solution approaches to the rail maintenance production gang scheduling problem.” J. Transp. Eng., 136(8), 701–708.
Grimes, G. A., and Barkan, C. P. L. (2006). “Cost-effectiveness of railway infrastructure renewal maintenance.” J. Transp. Eng., 132(8), 601–608.
Guan, J. F., Yang, H., and Wirasinghe, S. C. (2006). “Simultaneous optimization of transit line configuration and passenger line assignment.” Transp. Res. Part B, 40(10), 885–902.
Higgins, A., Ferreira, L., and Lake, M. (1999). “Scheduling rail track maintenance to minimise overall delays.” Proc., 14th Int. Symp. on Transportation and Traffic Theory, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
Higgins, A., Kozan, E., and Ferreira, L. (1996). “Optimal scheduling of trains on a single line track.” Transp. Res. Part B, 30(2), 147–161.
Júdice, J. J., Faustino, A. M., Ribeiro, I. M., and Neves, A. S. (2006). “On the use of bilevel programming for solving a structural optimization problem with discrete variables.” Optimization with multivalued mappings: Theory, applications and algorithms, S. Dempe, and Z. Kalashnikov, eds., Springer Verlag, New York, 123–142.
Kong, J. S., and Frangopol, D. M. (2003). “Evaluation of life-cycle maintenance cost of deteriorating structures.” J. Struct. Eng., 129(5), 682–691.
Lingaya, N., Cordeau, J. F., Esaulniers, G., Desrosiers, J., and Soumis, F. (2002). “Operational car assignment at VIA Rail Canada.” Transp. Res. Part B, 36(9), 755–778.
Lust, T., Roux, O. F., and Riane, O. (2009). “Exact and heuristic methods for the selective maintenance problem.” Eur. J. Oper. Res., 197(3), 1166–1177.
Macke, M., and Higuchi, S. (2007). “Optimizing maintenance interventions for deteriorating structures using cost-benefit criteria.” J. Struct. Eng., 133(7), 925–934.
Moghaddam, K. S. (2008). Preventive maintenance and replacement scheduling: Models and algorithms, Dept. of Industrial Engineering, Univ. of Louisville, Louisville, KY.
Office for Research and Experiments (ORE). (1988). “Dynamic vehicle/track interaction phenomena, from the point of view of track maintenance.” (Question D161, RP3), Union Internationale des Chemins de Fer (UIC).
Oyama, T., and Miwa, M. (2006). “Mathematical modeling analysis for obtaining an optimal railway track maintenance schedule.” Japan J. Indust. Appl. Math., 23(2), 207–224.
Rausand, M., and Vatn, J. (2008). “Reliability centered maintenance.” Complex system maintenance handbook, D. N. P. Murthy and K. A. H. Kobbacy, eds., Springer, London.
Rouillon, S., Desaulniers, G., and Soumis, F. (2006). “An extended branch-and-bound method for locomotive assignment.” Transp. Res. Part B, 40(5), 404–423.
Sherali, H., and Adams, W. (1999). A reformulation-linearization technique for solving discrete and continuous nonconvex problems, Kluwer Academic, Boston.
Union Internationale des Chemins de Fer (UIC). (2008). “Best practice guide for optimum track geometry durability.” Union Internationale des Chemins de Fer (UIC) Infrastructure Commission—Civil Engineering Support Group, Paris.
Uzarski, D., and McNeil, S. (1994). “Technologies for planning railroad track maintenance and renewal.” J. Transp. Eng., 120(5), 807–820.
Zhao, J., Chan, A. H. C., and Burrow, M. P. N. (2007). “Reliability analysis and maintenance decision for railway sleepers using track condition information.” J. Oper. Res. Soc., 58(8), 1047–1055.
Zorita, A. L., Duque, O., Fernandéz, M. A., and García-Escudero, L. A. (2010). “Determination and optimization of the maintenance frequencies in the overhead contact line system.” J. Transp. Eng., 136(11), 964–972.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 138 • Issue 1 • January 2012
Pages: 123 - 131
Copyright
© 2012 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Nov 24, 2010
Accepted: May 12, 2011
Published online: May 14, 2011
Published in print: Jan 1, 2012
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.