Reliability evaluations of railway power supplies by fault-tree analysis

摘要

High reliability of railway power systems is one of the essential criteria to ensure qualityudand cost-effectiveness of railway services. Evaluation of reliability at system level is essential forudnot only scheduling maintenance activities, but also identifying reliability-critical components.udVarious methods to compute reliability on individual components or regularly structuredudsystems have been developed and proven to be effective. However, they are not adequate forudevaluating complicated systems with numerous interconnected components, such as railwayudpower systems, and locating the reliability critical components. Fault tree analysis (FTA) integratesudthe reliability of individual components into the overall system reliability through quantitativeudevaluation and identifies the critical components by minimum cut sets and sensitivity analysis.udThe paper presents the reliability evaluation of railway power systems by FTA and investigatesudthe impact of maintenance activities on overall reliability. The applicability of the proposedudmethods is illustrated by case studies in AC railways.