THE AGEING OF SIGNALLING EQUIPMENT AND THE IMPACT ON MAINTENANCE STRATEGIES

摘要

Research projects of SNCF (French railway) aim at reducing the costs of infrastructure possessions andrnimproving the operational equipment availability and safety. This permanent search for a better regularity ledrnthe SNCF to analyse the maintenance approach of signalling equipmen,t in detail. Until now, it was commonlyrnacknowledged that signalling equipment, which consists of many electronic devices, is not subject to ageing. Inrnthis study, a Weibull lifetime model, able to describe an ageing phenomenon, is used and it can be shown thatrnthe deterioration is statistically significant. The validity of the model is tested. We also analyse the influence ofrnenvironmental covariates. We simulate different scenarios in order to investigate the impact of severalrnmaintenance strategies as well as on future maintenance costs, on the amount of components to replace basedrnon the mean age of the network. It can be shown that in most cases a systematic replacement strategy offers thernbest solution.