6 research outputs found
Experimental and numerical investigations of flexural behaviour of composite bearers in railway switches and crossings
An Alternative Rail Pad Tester for Measuring Dynamic Properties of Rail Pads Under Large Preloads
Influence of Asymmetrical Topology on Structural Behaviours of Bearers and Sleepers in Turnout Switches and Crossings
Experimental study on dynamic properties of railway ballast mixed with tire derived aggregate by modal shaker test
Optimisation of schedules for the inspection of railway tracks
Inspection of railway tracks involves a high volume of short-duration tasks (e.g. visual inspection, vehicle-based inspection, measurement, etc.) each of which is repeated at different frequencies and time intervals. It is important to gain asmany benefits as possible from the inspection tasks, which incur huge expenses. To date, various optimisation methods have been incorporated into the schedule generation to determine an inspection order for a known number and geographical location of tracks. Due to the specific requirements of certain tracks or inspection problem—for example, the number of schedule parameters and one-off or incremental type schedules—researchers have developed moresophisticated and problem-dependent optimisation methods. However, introduction of a new inspection technology and policy in the last five years, especially in the United Kingdom, has urged a remodelling of the scheduling problem in track inspection in order to cope up with the new operational and business constraints. Thus, this paper conducts a review and gap analysis of previous studies with regard to track inspection scheduling problems from an optimisation point of view. In addition, the authors discuss several potential research interests resulting from the gap analysis undertaken. This studyshows that heuristic methods are popular among researchers in searching for an optimal schedule subject to single or multiple optimisation function(s) while satisfying various technical and business constraints