Cost-effective Maintenance of Railway Track


Book Description

By far the greatest proportion of the total cost of maintaining the infrastructure of a railway arises from the track, Modern trains are lighter, travel faster and are much easier to derail than before. Therefore it is vital that track is maintained adequately.This volume shows how railways can be kept running using the minimum necessary maintenance, taking into account the environmental conditions and the type and volume of traffic using the railway.




The Railway Track and Its Long Term Behaviour


Book Description

A proper quality of a track and other infrastructure objects represents a basic requirement for train safety and punctuality. Most of the physical systems and their components deteriorate over time. This affects performance and may lead to failures. Albert Einstein said, “You have to learn the rules of the game. And then you have to play better than anyone else.” Only if we understand how the whole system works, taking into account its imperfections and how they influence its quality and performance will we be able to learn the rules of the game and “play better.” The book provides the readers with the necessary functional knowledge of track behaviour and comprehensively covers the function of the various track components, their interaction as elements of the track system, as well as the interaction of the track with railway vehicles. By presenting important tools for a deep understanding of track-behaviour this book aims to be a reference guide for infrastructure managers and to help them to find ways improving track quality for optimum long-term behaviour.







Maintenance Costs and Life Cycle Cost Analysis


Book Description

Authors have attempted to create coherent chapters and sections on how the fundamentals of maintenance cost should be organized, to present them in a logical and sequential order. Necessarily, the text starts with importance of maintenance function in the organization and moves to life cycle cost (LCC) considerations followed by the budgeting constraints. In the process, they have intentionally postponed the discussion about intangible costs and downtime costs later on in the book mainly due to the controversial part of it when arguing with managers. The book will be concluding with a short description of a number of sectors where maintenance cost is of critical importance. The goal is to train the readers for a deeper study and understanding of these elements for decision making in maintenance, more specifically in the context of asset management. This book is intended for managers, engineers, researchers, and practitioners, directly or indirectly involved in the area of maintenance. The book is focused to contribute towards better understanding of maintenance cost and use of this knowledge to improve the maintenance process. Key Features: • Emphasis on maintenance cost and life cycle cost especially under uncertainty. • Systematic approach of how cost models can be applied and used in the maintenance field. • Compiles and reviews existing maintenance cost models. • Consequential and direct costs considered. • Comparison of maintenance costs in different sectors, infrastructure, manufacturing, transport.




Transport Infrastructure and Systems


Book Description

Transport Infrastructure Asset management in transport infrastructure, financial viability of transport engineering projects/ Life cycle Cost Analysis, Life-Cycle Assessment and Sustainability Assessment of transport infrastructure/ Infrastructures financing and pricing with equity appraisal, operation optimization and energy management/ Low-Volume roads: planning, maintenance, operations, environmental and social issues/ Public-Private Partnership (PPP) experience in transport infrastructure in different countries and economic conditions/ Airport Pavement Management Systems, runway design and maintenance/ Port maintenance and development issues, technology relating to cargo handling, landside access, cruise operations/ Infrastructure Building Information Modelling (I-BIM) / Pavement design and innovative bituminous materials/ Recycling and re-use in road pavements, environmentally sustainable technologies/ Stone pavements, ancient roads and historic railways/ Cementitious stabilization of materials used in the rehabilitation of transportation infrastructure. Transport Systems Sustainable transport and the environment protection including green vehicles/ Urban transport, land use development, spatial and transport planning/ Bicycling, bike, bike-sharing systems, cycling mobility/ Human factor in transport systems/ Intelligent Mobility: emerging technologies to enable the smarter movement of people and goods/Airport landside: access roads, parking facilities, terminal facilities, aircraft apron and the azdjacent taxiway/ Transportation policy, planning and design, modelling and decision making/ Transport economics, finance and pricing issues, optimization problems, equity appraisal/ Road safety impact assessments, road safety audits, the management of road network safety and safety inspections/ Tunnels and underground structures: preventing incidents-accidents mitigating their effects for both people and goods/ Traffic flow characteristics, traffic control devices, work zone traffic control, highway capacity and quality of service/ Track-vehicle interactions in railway systems, capacity analysis of railway networks/ Risk assessment and safety in air and railway transport, reliability aspects/ Maritime transport and inland waterways transport research/ Intermodal freight transport: terminals and logistics.




Current Trends in Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety


Book Description

Containing selected papers from the ICRESH-ARMS 2015 conference in Lulea, Sweden, collected by editors with years of experiences in Reliability and maintenance modeling, risk assessment, and asset management, this work maximizes reader insights into the current trends in Reliability, Availability, Maintainability and Safety (RAMS) and Risk Management. Featuring a comprehensive analysis of the significance of the role of RAMS and Risk Management in the decision making process during the various phases of design, operation, maintenance, asset management and productivity in Industrial domains, these proceedings discuss key issues and challenges in the operation, maintenance and risk management of complex engineering systems and will serve as a valuable resource for those in the field.




International Congress and Workshop on Industrial AI and eMaintenance 2023


Book Description

This proceedings brings together the papers presented at the International Congress and Workshop on Industrial AI and eMaintenance 2023 (IAI2023). The conference integrates the themes and topics of three conferences: Industrial AI & eMaintenance, Condition Monitoring and Diagnostic Engineering Management (COMADEM) and, Advances in Reliability, Maintainability and Supportability (ARMS) on a single platform. This proceedings serves both academy and industry in providing an excellent platform for collaboration by providing a forum for exchange of ideas and networking. The 21st century has seen remarkable progress in Artificial Intelligence, with application to a variety of fields (computer vision, automatic translation, sentiment analysis in social networks, robotics, etc.) The IAI2023 focuses on Industrial Artificial Intelligence, or IAI. The emergence of industrial AI applications holds tremendous promises in terms of achieving excellence and cost-effectiveness in the operation and maintenance of industrial assets. Opportunities in Industrial AI exist in many industries such as aerospace, railways, mining, construction, process industry, etc. Its development is powered by several trends: the Internet of Things (IoT); the increasing convergence between OT (operational technologies) and IT (information technologies); last but not least, the unabated fast-paced developments of advanced analytics. However, numerous technical and organizational challenges to the widespread development of industrial AI still exist. The IAI2023 conference and its proceedings foster fruitful discussions between AI creators and industrial practitioners.




Trends on Construction in the Digital Era


Book Description

These proceedings address the latest developments in the broad area of intelligent construction integrated in the mission of the International Society for Intelligent Construction (ISIC) which aims to promote intelligent construction technologies applications from the survey, design, construction, operation, and maintenance/rehabilitation by adapting to changes of environments and minimizing risks. Its goals are to improve the quality of construction, cost-saving, and safety, exploring fundamental issues related to the application and use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning techniques and technology. ISIC 2022 is the 3rd ISIC international conference, held in Guimarães, Portugal on September 6–9, 2022, and follows the previous successful instalments of the conference series in China (2019) and USA (2017). It took a holistic approach to integrate civil engineering, construction machinery, electronic sensor technology, survey/testing technologies, information technology/computing, and other related fields in the broad area of intelligent construction. The respective contributions cover the following topics: Artificial Intelligence for Design and the Built Environment, Building Information Modelling (BIM) and Construction Automation and Robotics, Intelligent Construction, Sustainable Construction, and Sustainable and Smart Infrastructures. Given its broad range of coverage, the book will benefit students, educators, researchers and professionals practitioners alike, encouraging these readers to help the intelligent construction community into the digital era and with a vision on societal issues.




Life Cycle Analysis and Assessment in Civil Engineering: Towards an Integrated Vision


Book Description

This volume contains the papers presented at IALCCE2018, the Sixth International Symposium on Life-Cycle Civil Engineering (IALCCE2018), held in Ghent, Belgium, October 28-31, 2018. It consists of a book of extended abstracts and a USB device with full papers including the Fazlur R. Khan lecture, 8 keynote lectures, and 390 technical papers from all over the world. Contributions relate to design, inspection, assessment, maintenance or optimization in the framework of life-cycle analysis of civil engineering structures and infrastructure systems. Life-cycle aspects that are developed and discussed range from structural safety and durability to sustainability, serviceability, robustness and resilience. Applications relate to buildings, bridges and viaducts, highways and runways, tunnels and underground structures, off-shore and marine structures, dams and hydraulic structures, prefabricated design, infrastructure systems, etc. During the IALCCE2018 conference a particular focus is put on the cross-fertilization between different sub-areas of expertise and the development of an overall vision for life-cycle analysis in civil engineering. The aim of the editors is to provide a valuable source of cutting edge information for anyone interested in life-cycle analysis and assessment in civil engineering, including researchers, practising engineers, consultants, contractors, decision makers and representatives from local authorities.




Operations Research/Management Science at Work


Book Description

There is synergy between the diverse methodologies ofOperations Research and Management Science, and the many problems itseeks to solve. "Operation Research/Management Science at Work" isan example of that synergy. The principal aim of this book is toexamine selected recent research in and applications of OperationalResearch/Management Science. The focus is on research that is ofindustry interest and covers a wide range of topics from major fieldsof OR/MS in a systematic and coherent fashion. Each application ischosen to demonstrate the elegance of their implementations. The bookmeets the needs of applied researchers who are interested inapplications of OR/MS algorithms. Moreover, real world problemstogether with their solutions and implementations are the applicationsthat have been selected for the volume.The Asia Pacific region has embraced business applications of decisionsupport systems in recent years. Many of these applications have thestate of the art OR/MS techniques in this region embedded in them.Hence, the increased use of OR/MS techniques in this region providesopportunities for identifying methodological advances that are takingplace as a result of the unique nature of the applications. These alsoprovide opportunities for exploring synergies and interfaces thatexist between OR/MS, both in terms of applications and theoreticaladvances.