Quiroga, L. M.; Schnieder, E.:
Simulation based railway infrastructure maintenance optimisation.
1st eMaintenance workshop and Congress of eMaintenance 2010, Luleå, Sweden, June 2010.
ABSTRACT The modelling of systems, the support organization and the evaluation of their performances are key phases of any logistic support study and risk analysis. However, the methods most frequently used for this purpose are in some cases maladjusted, particularly if it is necessary to take into account the dynamic characteristics of these systems and/or the support means intended for their purpose. To remedy this deficiency, we think that simulation methods are very useful. In this work a stochastic Petri net based modelling method for Monte Carlo simulation is presented, and validated by a case study of a French high speed line. This work also presents a graphical software tool, capable of modelling, simulating and showing graphical result representations of railway infrastructure maintenance processes. The tool relies on the proposed Petri net based modelling method, and uses Monte Carlo techniques for simulation. Its main objective is to precisely forecast the impact of alternative maintenance policies on the global infrastructure availability. Keywords Infrastructure management, railways, maintenance, reliability, Petri nets.