High Speed Railway Degradation Modelling

High-speed railway infrastructure is a complex arrangement of systems and structures, which includes: track, switches, drainage, signalling, power supply and communications, in addition to the civil structures comprising earthworks, tunnels, bridges and stations. As new high speed railways are built, it is important that plans are in place to ensure that they are sustainable and affordable so that elements can be renewed as they wear out or become obsolete due to new technologies.

To be able to plan for renewals it is necessary to understand how all the infrastructure elements degrade due to either the passage of time or use. This enables the estimation of when replacement is necessary, and can be achieved using modelling methods which include artificial intelligence (AI).

This project is to develop and apply methods by which data, indicating the effects that time and usage have on the railway condition, can be used to predict the expected time that renewal will be necessary.