Automain

The aim of the project is to make the movement of freight by rail more dependable, i.e. reliable, available, maintainable and safe through the generation of additional capacity on the existing network.

Sponsors: EU, FP7 (Seventh Framework Programme) & Trafikverket (the Swedish Transport Administration)
Researchers: Uday Kumar, Ulla Juntti & Aditya Parida
Duration: 2011–2014

An EU project for Augmented Usage of Track by Optimisation of Maintenance, Allocation and Inspection of railway Networks.
The high level aim of the project is to make the movement of freight by rail more dependable, i.e. reliable, available, maintainable and safe through the generation of additional capacity on the existing network. Through the widespread introduction of automation that is designed to improve the Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety (RAMS) of railway infrastructure equipment and systems, it is anticipated that required possession time (downtime) of the railway could be reduced by as much as 40%.

The project is on-going and will deliver five key innovations in the area of railway infrastructure maintenance improvement. Each of the innovations will individually either speed-up and/or help optimize existing maintenance processes, which will in turn reduce the possession time required and create capacity for freight.

LTU/JVTC provides knowledge, experience and expertise in WPs 1, 2 and 3 and is the work package leader for WP4 for “High performance maintenance”. WP4 will provide more capacity for freight trains by strengthened and increased efficiency of high performance maintenance by speeding up large scale maintenance and develop a modular approach for maintenance of switches and crossings. This will be achieved by elimination/isolation of performance killers, cost and risk drives through a link and effect model and capacity optimization.