An Optimization Method for Maintenance Resource Allocation in Electrified Railway Catenary Systems

The traditional preventive maintenance plans of electrified railways are mainly formulated according to historical maintenance records and the experience of maintenance technicians. With the increase of the maintenance workload of catenary systems, traditional maintenance decision-making modes are hard to accommodate the demand for the high-efficiency and economical operation of catenary systems. To cater for the on-site maintenance demands, a conceptual framework towards the cost-effective optimization of catenary maintenance is proposed in this paper. The framework includes investigating and sorting the physical quantities in practical maintenance operations, modeling the maintenance operation process, establishing and solving the optimization model of the maintenance operator allocation with multiple optional objectives, and developing the human-machine application system, namely, the resource allocation system (RAS) with both hardware and software for electrified railway catenary maintenance. Field application shows that the implementation of RAS is superior to the current maintenance scheme in maintenance efficiency and cost, which can provide decision support for the scientific formulation of catenary system maintenance scheme, and promote the intelligent development of current maintenance modes.