Optimal railway infrastructure maintenance and repair policies to manage risk under uncertainty with adaptive control

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to apply two adaptive control formulations under uncertainty, say open-loop and closed-loop, to the process of developing maintenance and repair policies for railway infrastructures. To establish the optimal maintenance and repair policies for railway lines, we use a previous design of risk model based on two factors: the criticality and the deterioration ratios of the facilities. Thus, our theory benefits from the Reliability Centered Management methodology application, but it also explicitly models uncertainty in characterizing a facility deterioration rate to decide the optimal policy to maintain the railway infrastructures. This may be the major contribution of this work. To verify the models presented, a computation study has been developed and tested for a real scenario: the railway line Villalba-Cercedilla in Madrid (Spain). Our results demonstrate again that applying any adaptive formulation, the cost of the railway lines maintenance shown is decreased. Moreover applying a Closed Loop Formulation the cost associated to the risk takes smaller values (40% less cost for the same risk than the deterministic approach), but with an Open Loop formulation the generated risk in the railway line is also smaller.