Safety-oriented Testing for High-speed Rail Onboard Equipment Using Petri Nets

With its ability to operate at high speeds and capacity, high-speed rail offers a fast, dependable, and ecofriendly urban transportation option. Safety-critical systems such as high-speed rail signaling systems must be tested regularly to assess compliance with specifications and ensure reliable performance. Given that the onboard equipment is the core component of the signaling system, conducting safety testing on this equipment is of utmost importance. Current methods of analyzing test requirements mainly rely on human interpretation of specifications. However, the official technical specifications usually only outline standard operational scenarios, which could result in an inefficient and unclear safety analysis. This paper focuses on safety-oriented testing for onboard equipment. In particular, we propose a Petri net based approach to generate test cases for diverse operational scenarios. This approach improves both the efficiency and reliability of the testing process while ensuring compliance with safety requirements

Automated Test Sequence Optimization Based on the Maze Algorithm and Ant Colony Algorithm

With the rapid development of China train operation and control system, validity and safety of behavioral functions of the system have attracted much attention in the railway domain. In this paper, an automated test sequence optimization method was presented from the system functional requirement specification of the high-speed railway. To overcome the local optimum of traditional ant colony algorithm, the maze algorithm is integrated with the ant colony algorithm to achieve the dynamical learning capacity and improve the adaptation capacity to the complex and changeable environment, and therefore, this algorithm can produce the optimal searching results. Several key railway operation scenarios are selected as the representative functional scenarios and Colored Petri Nets (CPN) is used to model the scenarios. After the CPN model is transformed into the extensible markup language (XML) model, the improved ant colony algorithm is employed to generate the optimal sequences. The shortest searching paths are found and the redundant test sequences are reduced based on the natural law of ants foraging. Finally, the Radio Blocking Center (RBC) test platform is designed and used to validate the optimal sequence. Testing results show that the proposed method is able to optimize the test sequences and improve the test efficiency successfully

Systems engineering framework for railway control & safety systems

Traditional railway signalling systems have been based on fixed block train separation and line-of-sight signals to control the movement of trains. This has historically led to a segregation of both the functionality and the development of sub-systems such as signalling, rolling stock and control centres, all following a sequential design-based approach in their development. These traditional systems are becoming increasingly redundant as the railway industry embraces modern systems such as the higher levels of ERTMS and CBTC. With the change to these complex systems of systems also comes a change in the way in which the industry must develop and deliver projects. The railway industry has, at times, struggled to embrace systems engineering, as it is perceived to run against the safety-focused design approach that rightfully enjoys a high status within the industry. Many engineers in the industry who are familiar with the traditional design based approach also struggle with relating the new systems to the traditional principles that they are used to. This research investigates the feasibility of producing a systems engineering framework that can be applied to all forms of Railway Control & Safety (RCS) systems in order to simplify their development and delivery

Mapping of the electromagnetic environment on the railway: Condition monitoring of signalling assets

Conventional track circuit condition monitoring systems are fixed at the wayside, with each installation reporting on a single track circuit. In this work, we present a custom-built, sensitive, magnetic field detection system, which can be fitted to the underside of a rail vehicle. With this system installed, some characteristics of an operating track circuit can be monitored from the vehicle whilst it is in motion. By using appropriate analysis techniques, it is possible to identify the signatures of equipment relating to audio frequency track circuits, the topic of this work. Analysing the signatures of track circuit equipment demonstrated that there were clear differences between track circuit assets. By building on other research into the behaviours of failing track circuits, and continuing to conduct this research, the authors believe that it is possible, and beneficial, to perform condition monitoring of track circuits from low-cost equipment mounted on the train. Coupling this with advanced analysis techniques will allow predictive maintenance of track circuits with very little capital outlay

Verifizierbare Entwicklung eines satellitenbasierten Zugsicherungssystems mit Petrinetzen

Nowadays model-based techniques are widely used in system design and development, especially for safety-critical systems such as train control systems. Given a design model, executable codes could be generated automatically from the model following certain transformation rules. A high-quality model of a system provides a good understanding, a favourable structure, a reasonable scale and abstraction level as well as realistic behaviours with respect to the concurrent operation of independent subsystems. Motivated by this principle, a first Coloured Petri Net (CPN) model of a satellite-based train control system (SatZB) with the capability of continuous simulation is developed employing the BASYSNET method which adopts Petri nets as the means of description during the whole development process. After establishing the system model, the verification tasks are identified based on the hazard analysis of the train control system. To verify the identified tasks for quality assurance, verification by means of simulation, formal analysis and testing is carried out considering the four representing system properties: function, state, structure and behaviour. For structural analysis, the concept of open nets is proposed to check the reproducibility of empty markings of scenario nets, the existence of dead transitions in the scenario nets, and the terminating states of the scenario nets. The system behaviour, in which states are involved, is investigated by reachability analysis. Unlike the conventional method of reachability analysis by calculating the state space of the Petri net, techniques based on Petri net unfoldings are introduced in this thesis. As to the functional verification, two model-based test generation techniques, i.e., CPN-based and SPENAT (Safe Place Transition Nets with Attributes)-based techniques, are presented. In this thesis, the proposed methods are exemplified by the application to the on-board module of SatZB model. According to the verification results, no errors were found in the module. Therefore, the confidence in the quality of the on-board module has been significantly increased.Heutzutage werden in zahlreichen Anwendungen modellbasierte Techniken zur Systementwicklung, insbesondere für sicherheitskritische Systeme wie Eisenbahnleit- und -sicherungssysteme, verwendet. Aus einem Design Modell kann dabei ausführbarer Code automatisch nach bestimmten Transformationsregeln generiert werden. Ein hochwertiges Modell des Systems bietet für die Entwicklung ein gutes Verständnis, eine günstige Struktur, eine angemessene Größenordnung und Abstraktionsebene als auch realistische Verhaltensweisen in Bezug auf den gleichzeitigen Betrieb von unabhängigen Subsystemen. Motiviert von dieses Prinzip wird ein erstes Farbige Petri-Netz (CPN)-Modell eines satellitenbasierten Zugsicherungssystem (SatZB) unter Verwendung der BASYSNET Methode entwickelt, der Petri-Netze als Beschreibungsmittel während des gesamten Entwicklungsprozesses nutzt. Dieses Modell bietet die Möglichkeit zur kontinuierlichen Simulation des Systemverhaltens. Nach der Erstellung des Systemmodells werden die Verifikationsaufgaben auf der Grundlage der Gefährdungsanalyse des Zugsicherungssystems identifiziert. Die abgeleiteten Bedingungen werden zur Qualitätssicherung durch Simulation, formale Analysen und Tests unter Berücksichtigung der vier Systemeigenschaften (Funktion, Zustand, Struktur und Verhalten) verifiziert. Für die Strukturanalyse wird das Konzept der offenen Netzen vorgeschlagen, um die Reproduzierbarkeit der leeren Markierungen der Szenario-Netze, die Existenz der Toten Transitionen in den Szenario-Netze, und die Abschluss Zustände der Szenario-Netze zu prüfen. Das Systemverhalten wird dabei durch Zustände beschrieben und durch eine Erreichbarkeitsanalyse untersucht. Im Gegensatz zu der konventionellen Methode, welche die Erreichbarkeit durch die Berechnung des Zustandsraums des Petri-Netzes analysiert, werden in dieser Arbeit Techniken auf Basis von Petri-Netz-Entfaltung eingeführt. Für die funktionale Verifikation werden zwei modellbasierte Testgenerierungstechniken, eine CPN-basierte und eine SPENAT (Sicheres Petrinetz mit Attributen)-basierte, vorgestellt. In dieser Arbeit werden die vorgeschlagenen Methoden durch die Anwendung auf das On-Board-Modul des SatZB-Modells veranschaulicht. Dabei wurden nach dem Abschluss der Prüfungen keine Fehler im Modul gefunden, wodurch das Vertrauen in die Qualität des On-Board-Moduls deutlich erhöht wurde

Simulation combined model-based testing method for train control systems

A Train Control System (TCS) is utilised to guard the operational safety of the trains in railway systems. Therefore, functional testing is applied to verify consistency between the TCS and specification requirements. Traditional functional testing in TCSs is mainly based on manually designed test cases, which is becoming unsuitable for testing increasingly complex TCSs. Therefore, Model-Based Testing (MBT) methods have been introduced into TCS functional testing, to improve the efficiency and coverage of TCS testing, with application difficulties. To overcome the difficulties of applying MBT methods to test TCSs, the author introduces simulation combined MBT which combines an MBT method with simulation. Modelling method and implementation method for the proposed approach were explained in detail. Two case studies were undertaken to explore the effectiveness of the testing platform developed. The testing results obtained prove that the testing platform can be utilised to implement the functional testing of TCSs. To prove that the MBT platform is effective in detecting errors in the SUT, validation and verification was undertaken, which include validation of specification requirements and verification of the MBT platform. The testing performance is proven to be better than existing MBT methods in terms of coverage and efficiency

Analysis of Railway Signalling Systems to Increase Line and Node Capacity

"Europe is one of the most urbanized continents on the planet: about 75% of its population lives in urban areas” (European Enviroment Agency, 2017). In this urban context, the car is still the widely used way of transport, while public transport manages to capture residual segments of the demand for mobility. However, in a structural framework of obvious concern and criticality for public transport, there is a component of the sector in strong expansion, that is, all rail transports. In addition, the incidence of rail transport is even more significant in large metropolitan systems where daily travel reaches its highest levels of expression. It is known, however, that the supply of transport services is limited by the capacity of the transport system which depends on the physical size of the infrastructure, that is, the capacity of the infrastructure, the number of vehicles, the capacity of the vehicle fleet, the operating time and the traffic regime implemented