Application of RAMS and Life Cycle Cost Analysis on Maintenance: A Case of Railway Signaling Systems
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Date
2019-07
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
The railway signaling system’s role is to control and regulate the movement of trains safely and efficiently while ensuring maximum utilization of the existing track. Maintenance of this system accounts for a big portion of the overall maintenance costs due to the frequent failures and the need to maintain a high level of dependability of the railway network. As a vital area of operation and maintenance, signaling system maintenance strategies need informed decision-making support since they affect both operation and financial performance of the railway operator.
This research studied an integrated RAMS and LCC analysis to optimize the maintenance of the signaling system. Equations were formulated for assigning costs to repair/restore asset failures, service loss, and life cycle cost during the operation and maintenance phase. Thereafter, a case study on the AALRT signaling system corrective maintenance was carried out.
The axle counter failures account for more than 80% of all signaling system failures. Preventive measures such as scheduled resets during out-of-service hours can be adopted to reduce the occurrence of failures during in-service hours. With 4.9% of the signaling failures causing traffic interruption, it is clear that the signaling system greatly contributes to SAF and therefore must be repaired or restored quickly to minimize the effect on the service. On corrective maintenance performance, repair time cost accounts for more than 50% of the corrective maintenance cost. A review of the corrective maintenance procedures is needed to minimize the time spent on maintenance as this greatly affects the costs and revenues of the operator. Modifying the maintenance cycle according to the MTBF can improve the reliability by processing maintenance work timely. Proposals have been made on methods for optimizing the maintenance of railway signaling systems for a reliable railway network.
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Keywords
Signaling system, failure, maintenance, RAMS, Life Cycle Cost, optimize