MER MEC at AREMA 2006
15 September 2006 11:54
The REMSA World Rail Expo and AREMA International Conference will be held in conjunction this year on September 17 - 19 in Lousville, Kentucky. On Tuesday, September 19 at the Functional Group Session, MER MEC will present a paper about asset management techniques and best practices. Dr. Pietro Pace, RAMSYS Project Manager from MER MEC, will discuss "Railway Track Quality Assessment & Related Decision Making".
The paper is the result of Mr. Stasha Jovanovic's studies at the Faculty of Civil Engineering & Geosciences at the Delft University of Technology. The study treats of the last results of ongoing research about deterioration models in track maintenance. This model is currently incorporated in RAMSYS, MER MEC's asset management solution.
The paper is based on evidence that the Maintenance and Renewal (M&R) of railway networks requires significant investments so that even marginal improvements in the efficiency of the maintenance management can yield large absolute savings. Understanding the manner in which every single railway infrastructure element changes means that it is possible to predict future behaviour.
The research presented in the paper describes a generic / universal deterioration model that was developed specifically so that it would be flexible enough to be applicable to any parameter's deterioration, yet powerful and flexible enough to accurately represent / fit various condition behaviours.
Developing such a generic deterioration model, empowering it with LCC and numerical optimization techniques, and incorporating them all in a suitable, powerful yet flexible, Track Maintenance Management System (TMMS) or full-scale Asset Management System (AMS), allows railways to perform true long-term simulations of the track behaviour, effectively balancing achieved quality with the costs of M&R works, inspections and other consequences like traffic disruptions and availability, enabling significant cost-savings.
For more information on this company:
Mer Mec - Rail, Track, Wheel, Overhead Line and Ride Quality Measuring Systems and Vehicles for Condition Monitoring of Conventional and High-Speed Railways
Copyright 2007 SPG Media Limited a subsidiary of SPG Media Group PLC
