Decision Support System to Improve Railway Track Maintenance Using Track-Quality Index (TQI)

Abstract

In recent years, studies on track degradation in railways have attracted a great deal of attention. Intensive research activities have been carried out by many organizations with the aim of securing a high level of safety and reliability of the infrastructure system. New technologies and stringent safety standards are constantly being introduced for several reasons, not only to prevent the assets from failure or damage but also to minimize the main sources of problems associated with the performance degradation in terms of quality, comfort and safety of each journey. Following these shortcomings, this research aims to develop a logical model for the deterioration of track geometry and to incorporate the proposed model as basis for optimizing maintenance in practice. For the purpose of analysis, a segment of Northeastern line from Thanon Chira junction to Nong Khai station comprising 320.900 km. and 35 stations, in length will be considered and multivariate statistical analyzes will be employed in some geometric parameters. The results will be used to derive the optimization model for scheduling track maintenance by means of tamping in a given period of time