Assessing Wear Evolutions in Railway Wheelsets Using a Survival Modeling Approach

Author(s):  
Guilerme A. C. Caldeira ◽  
JoaquimAP Braga ◽  
António R. Andrade

Abstract The present paper provides a method to predict maintenance needs for the railway wheelsets by modeling the wear out affecting the wheelsets during its life cycle using survival analysis. Wear variations of wheel profiles are discretized and modelled through a censored survival approach, which is appropriate for modeling wheel profile degradation using real operation data from the condition monitoring systems that currently exist in railway companies. Several parametric distributions for the wear variations are modeled and the behavior of the selected ones is analyzed and compared with wear trajectories computed by a Monte Carlo simulation procedure. This procedure aims to test the independence of events by adding small fractions of wear to reach larger wear values. The results show that the independence of wear events is not true for all the established events, but it is confirmed for small wear values. Overall, the proposed framework is developed in such a way that the outputs can be used to support predictions in condition-based maintenance models and to optimize the maintenance of wheelsets.

2014 ◽  
Vol 12 (3) ◽  
pp. 307-315 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sekar Vinodh ◽  
Gopinath Rathod

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to present an integrated technical and economic model to evaluate the reusability of products or components. Design/methodology/approach – Life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology is applied to obtain the product’s environmental performance. Monte Carlo simulation is utilized for enabling sustainable product design. Findings – The results show that the model is capable of assessing the potential reusability of used products, while the usage of simulation significantly increases the effectiveness of the model in addressing uncertainties. Research limitations/implications – The case study has been conducted in a single manufacturing organization. The implications derived from the study are found to be practical and useful to the organization. Practical implications – The paper reports a case study carried out for an Indian rotary switches manufacturing organization. Hence, the model is practically feasible. Originality/value – The article presents a study that investigates LCA and simulation as enablers of sustainable product design. Hence, the contributions of this article are original and valuable.


Author(s):  
Rick Vandoorne ◽  
Petrus J Gräbe

The need for decision support systems to guide maintenance and renewal decisions for infrastructure is growing due to tighter budget requirements and the concurrent need to satisfy reliability, availability and safety requirements. The rail of the railway track is one of the most important components of the entire track structure and can significantly influence maintenance costs throughout the life cycle of the track. Estimation of life cycle cost is a popular decision support system. A calculated life cycle cost has inherent uncertainty associated with the reliability of the input data used in such a model. A stochastic life cycle cost model was developed for the rail of the railway track incorporating imperfect inspections. The model was implemented using Monte Carlo simulation in order to allow quantification of the associated uncertainty within the life cycle cost calculated. For a given set of conditions, an optimal renewal tonnage exists at which the rail should be renewed in order to minimise the mean life cycle cost. The optimal renewal tonnage and minimum attainable mean life cycle cost are dependent on the length of inspection interval, weld type used for maintenance as well as the cost of maintenance and inspection activities. It was found that the distribution of life cycle cost for a fixed renewal tonnage followed a log-normal probability distribution. The standard deviation of this distribution can be used as a metric to quantify uncertainty. Uncertainty increases with an increase in the length of inspection interval for a fixed rail renewal tonnage. With all other conditions fixed, it was found that the uncertainty in life cycle cost increases with an increase in the rail renewal tonnage. The relative contribution of uncertainty of the planned and unplanned maintenance costs towards the uncertainty in total life cycle cost was found to be dependent on the length of inspection interval.


2014 ◽  
Vol 635-637 ◽  
pp. 2023-2028
Author(s):  
Xiang Zan ◽  
Shi Xin Zhang ◽  
Yi Zheng ◽  
Yan Chao Liu

As an essential role in determination of condition-based maintenance (CBM) objects ,necessity and applicability analysis are both important. Necessity analysis is first and applicability analysis is second is proposed. Due to shortcoming of traditional methods, a quantitative is proposed. The key of method are criticality evaluation based on Monte Carlo simulation and applicability analysis based on regression analysis, which can solve the problem short of unite standard and influence by subjective factors. The result shows the model works well.


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