Citation

Zhang T, Li X, Wu D, Wang H, Liu J, Zhang D. Sustainability (Basel) 2022; 14(18): e11669.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2022, MDPI: Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute)

DOI

10.3390/su141811669

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

The Centralized Traffic Control (CTC) system plays an important role in ensuring safe and efficient rail transportation operations. It is mainly responsible for the implementation and adjustment of the train operation schedule through the automatic control of the station signalling equipment. The major task of the CTC system is to achieve a high rail transportation operation efficiency under the precondition of safety. For this purpose, it is necessary to select appropriate safety control schemes for the CTC system. In this paper, a formal approach is proposed to quantitatively evaluate the operation efficiencies of the CTC system with respect to different safety control schemes. The proposed approach adopts stochastic coloured Petri nets as the means of description for the system model, and evaluates the operation efficiency of the CTC system based on the data collected during the simulation of the system model. To exemplify the proposed approach, the safety control scheme of prohibiting a passenger train from passing a freight train through adjacent rail tracks between two adjacent stations is studied. The results of the case study show the feasibility of the proposed approach.

Language: en

Keywords

Centralized Traffic Control (CTC); operation efficiency; Petri nets; rail transportation; safety control