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serdar  dindar
  • Civil Engineering, Birmingham Centre for Railway Research and Education
    School of Engineering
    The University of Birmingham
    Edgbaston B15 2TT UK

serdar dindar

Railway turnouts are fundamental mechanical infrastructures, which allow a rolling stock to divert one direction to another. As those are of a large number of engineering subsystems, e.g. track, signalling, earthworks, these particular... more
Railway turnouts are fundamental mechanical infrastructures, which allow a rolling stock to divert one direction to another. As those are of a large number of engineering subsystems, e.g. track, signalling, earthworks, these particular sub-systems are expected to induce high potential through various kind of failure mechanisms. This could be a cause of any catastrophic event. A derailment, one of undesirable events in railway operation, often results, albeit rare occurs, in damaging to rolling stock, railway infrastructure and disrupt service, and has the potential to cause casualties and even loss of lives. As a result, it is quite significant that a well-designed risk analysis is performed to create awareness of hazards and to identify what parts of the systems may be at risk. This study will focus on all types of environment based failures as a result of numerous contributing factors noted officially as accident reports. This risk analysis is designed to help industry to minimise the occurrence of accidents at railway turnouts. The methodology of the study relies on accurate assessment of derailment likelihood, and is based on statistical multiple factors-integrated accident rate analysis. The study is prepared in the way of establishing product risks and faults, and showing the impact of potential process by Boolean algebra.
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Railway turnouts are complex systems designed using complex geometries and grades which makes them difficult to be managed in terms of risk prevention. This feature poses a substantial peril to rail users as it is considered a cause of... more
Railway turnouts are complex systems designed using complex geometries and grades which makes them difficult to be managed in terms of risk prevention. This feature poses a substantial peril to rail users as it is considered a cause of derailment. In addition, derailment deals to financial losses due to operational downtimes and monetary compensations in case of death or injure. These are fundamental drivers to consider mitigating risks arising from poor risk management during design. Prevention through design (PtD) is a process that introduces tacit knowledge from industry professionals during the design process. There is evidence that Building Information Modelling (BIM) can help to mitigate risk since the inception of the project. BIM is considered an Information System (IS) were tacit knowledge can be stored and retrieved from a digital database making easy to take promptly decisions as information is ready to be analysed. BIM at the model element level entails working with 3D elements and embedded data, therefore adding a layer of complexity to the management of information along the different stages of the project and across different disciplines. In order to overcome this problem, the industry has created a framework for model progression specification named Level of Development (LOD). The paper presents an IDM based framework for design risk mitigation through code validation using the LOD. This effort resulted on risk datasets which describe graphically and non-graphically a rail turnout as the model progresses. Thus, permitting its inclusion within risk information systems. The assignment of an LOD construct to a set of data, requires specialised management and process related expertise. Furthermore, the selection of a set of LOD constructs requires a purpose based analysis. Therefore, a framework for LOD constructs implementation within the IDM for code checking is required for the industry to progress in this particular field.
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One of the emerging significant advances in engineering, satellite imaging (SI) is becoming very common in any kind of civil engineering projects e.g., bridge, canal, dam, earthworks, power plant, water works etc., to provide an accurate,... more
One of the emerging significant advances in engineering, satellite imaging (SI) is becoming very common in any kind of civil engineering projects e.g., bridge, canal, dam, earthworks, power plant, water works etc., to provide an accurate, economical and expeditious means of acquiring a rapid assessment. Satellite imaging services in general utilise combinations of high quality satellite imagery, image processing and interpretation to obtain specific required information, e.g. surface movement analysis. To extract, manipulate and provide such a precise knowledge, several systems, including geographic information systems (GIS) and global positioning system (GPS), are generally used for orthorectification. Although such systems are useful for mitigating risk from projects, their productiveness is arguable and operational risk after application is open to discussion. As the applicability of any novel application to the railway industry is often measured in terms of whether or not it has gained in-depth knowledge and to what degree, as a result of errors during its operation, this novel application generates risk in ongoing projects. This study reviews what can be achievable for risk management of railway turnouts thorough satellite imaging. The methodology is established on the basis of other published articles in this area and the results of applications to understand how applicable such imagining process is on railway turnouts, and how sub-systems in turnouts can be effectively traced/operated with less risk than at present. As a result of this review study, it is aimed that the railway sector better understands risk mitigation in particular applications
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To enhance rail operational flexibility, railway turnouts are special track systems, which are designed to divert or change a train from a particular direction or a particular track onto other directions or other tracks. In reality, the... more
To enhance rail operational flexibility, railway turnouts are special track systems, which are designed to divert or change a train from a particular direction or a particular track onto other directions or other tracks. In reality, the railway turnout is commonly built on complex track geometry and graded terrain, which makes it one of the most unique and critical railway infrastructures. The physical constraints and complexity of turnout systems cause various risks and uncertainty in rail operations. This study critically analyses emerging geotechnical risks on turnout systems considering all aspects that can potentially result in impaired reliability, availability, maintainability and safety (RAMS) of the turnout systems. The annual derailment incidents have been evaluated to identify emerging risk factors. Not only do these incidents yield operational downtime and financial losses, but they also give rise to the casualties and sometimes the loss of lives across the world. In particular, the climate change risks on geotechnical aspects of the turnout systems have been highlighted. This paper thus presents how turnout components work as a system, the diversity of emerging risks considering natural hazards and global warming potential to the system. In addition, it highlights the climate change adaptation strategies for georisk mitigation of the railway turnout systems in order to improve RAMS of the railway turnouts and crossings, focusing on trackbed failures on the systems.
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Turnout system is one of the most critical infrastructures in the railway operations. As high demand in railway operation, the railway operators have to increase the axle load, traffic density and speed of the operation. These would be... more
Turnout system is one of the most critical infrastructures in the railway operations. As high demand in railway operation, the railway operators have to increase the axle load, traffic density and speed of the operation. These would be able to give high impact to the turnout system as increasing the vibration level and noise when the rolling stock crossing the turnout. Therefore, any failure in turnout system can cause negative impact to the operation in scope of maintenance cost and catastrophic consequence effect from the failure could happen such as major derailment. Safety-based maintenance (SBM) approach is an effective maintenance that takes safety into account in the maintenance by analysing the probability of the failure occurrence and severity of the consequence. Safety analysis is to ensure that the probabilities of the failure occurrence and the consequence from the failure such as death or injury and damage or loss of property can be minimised as to a level that is as low as reasonably practicable (ALARP). In this study, SBM and ALARP will be used to demonstrate the optimisation of geometry restoration activities of the railway turnout, which is essential for the safety requirements and quality standards. The failure behaviour in different operational environment such as effect of temperature, humidity, snow, dust, corrosive environment and natural calamity will be analysed to form fault tree analysis and establish a safety-based maintenance approach that is practical and useful for railway industry.
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The construction of railway turnout entails a complex geometry and multi-disciplinary engineering science, which makes it one of the most critical railway infrastructures. As such, these characteristics pose various risks in rail... more
The construction of railway turnout entails a complex geometry and multi-disciplinary engineering science, which makes it one of the most critical railway infrastructures. As such, these characteristics pose various risks in rail operation. A considerable number of derailment incidents at the turnouts are reported annually worldwide. Not only do these incidents cause operational downtime and financial loss, they also give rise to casualties and sometimes loss of life. One of the fundamental reasons for this may well be the fact that the railway industry pays little attention to the risk elements of railway turnouts. The paper provides an integrated approach of how to deal with the many different risks arising from various sources in railway turnout systems by suitably identifying the multi-disciplinary risk analysis methods for the complex systems. In order to do so, available open literatures are critically analysed by virtue of comparison, industry experiences and deductions. As a result, various qualitative- and quantitative-based risk analysis methods are proposed to fully understand a number of technical phenomena, e.g. ageing, degradation and signalling faults, in a railway turnout system.
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Disruptions can occur during the execution of any schedule or plan. Both minor and major disruptions must be handled properly, because they have the potential to cause deviation from the original schedule's main goals. In rail track... more
Disruptions can occur during the execution of any schedule or plan. Both minor and major disruptions must be handled properly, because they have the potential to cause deviation from the original schedule's main goals. In rail track inspection schedules, ultrasonic machine breakdown, unavailability of tracks due to extreme weathers and special inspection requests are some of potential disruption factors. Surprisingly, it is difficult to obtain a single publication that has discussed in details about disruption management in track inspection schedule operation, while an opposite trend is seen for railway operations, i.e., crew and rolling stock schedules. This unbalanced situation presents a challenge, because track inspection schedules are also implemented in a real-time setting. Since proper inspection activities are essential to ensure the continuity and safety of train operations, this paper aims to first identify the potential sources of disruption to predetermined track inspection schedules. The findings are then used to formulate an appropriate strategy for dealing with disruption and a method for developing a practical rescheduling operator.
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Based on several decades of scientific observations, the world agrees that climate change is real and unequivocal. Around the world, atmospheric and oceanic temperature has been increasing, the amount of ice on the earth is decreasing,... more
Based on several decades of scientific observations, the world agrees that climate change is real and unequivocal. Around the world, atmospheric and oceanic temperature has been increasing, the amount of ice on the earth is decreasing, and then sea level has risen. In reality, the current railway network in Malaysia, over the last decade, has been significantly affected by severe weather conditions such as rainfall, lightning, wind and very high temperatures. These extreme climate conditions can result in asset system failure, quickly deteriorated operation and ultimately, delays to train services. Thus to avoid those disaster to happen, such infrastructure resilience is a vital for the new proposed High Speed Railway from Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia to Singapore. Identifying new and innovative way of improving infrastructure, which is resilience during periods of severe weather conditions, will reinforce the operational resilience of HSR once it is open. This study is therefore focused on the risks and pertinent effects of climate change on HSR infrastructure operation in Malaysia, including their operational requirements, local conditions including topographical and geological aspects, together with the operational requirements and local conditions to the design of infrastructure.
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Railway turnouts are a critical railway infrastructure with a unique complex geometry. As a consequence, they induce a diverse nature of risk during railway operation. A large number of accidents, collision and derailment in particular,... more
Railway turnouts are a critical railway infrastructure with a unique complex geometry. As a consequence, they induce a diverse nature of risk during railway operation. A large number of accidents, collision and derailment in particular, occur on or near railway turnouts. Not only do the accidents result in operational downtime and financial losses, they may also yield the casualties and, occasionally, the loss of life. As a result of such complexity, the maintenance burden of turnouts is remarkably high. To reduce the cost, casualties and faults, a risk-based maintenance strategy for geometry problems of turnouts has been developed. In addition to the model, the paper deals with various geometry-related failures and assesses the relationship between the failures and their contributing factors.
Disruption in a schedule (or plan) can be managed but not all factors are visible. A study of disruption management is performed specifically to minimize the differences between the expected and actual context of execution. The purpose of... more
Disruption in a schedule (or plan) can be managed but not all factors are visible. A study of disruption management is performed specifically to minimize the differences between the expected and actual context of execution. The purpose of this paper is twofold: first to offer an introduction and deliver a concept of disruption management in the transportation sector. Second, we aim to understand challenges in a rescheduling strategy to manage disruption in the area of resource scheduling. Real world applications from airline to railway services are used as a basis of the investigation. A discussion on the future development of disruption management with a focus on rail track inspection is provided in the final part of this paper.
Research Interests:
As an essential feature to enable rail operational flexibility, railway turnouts are special track systems used to divert a train from a particular direction or a particular track onto other directions or other tracks. Railway turnout is... more
As an essential feature to enable rail operational flexibility, railway turnouts are special track systems used to divert a train from a particular direction or a particular track onto other directions or other tracks. Railway turnout is constructed on a complex geometry and grade, which makes it one of the most critical railway infrastructures. These characteristics pose various risks in rail operations. A considerable number of derailment incidents have occurred every year. Not only do these incidents yield operational downtime and financial losses, but they also give rise to the casualties and sometimes the loss of lives across the world. One of fundamental reasons is that railway industry barely pays attention to risk elements on railway turnouts. This paper thus presents how turnout components work as a system, the diversity of emerging risks considering natural hazards and global warming potential to the system. Additionally, in order to perform a well-designed quantitative-based risk analysis method for appropriate risk management of railway turnouts and crossings, focusing on aging, degradation and signalling faults on the systems, the research develops a number of new ideas.
Railway infrastructure is nonlinear by nature, scientifically proven by its behaviours, geometry and alignment, wheel-rail forces and operational parameters such as tractive efforts. It is often found that most train-turnout interaction... more
Railway infrastructure is nonlinear by nature, scientifically proven by its behaviours, geometry and alignment, wheel-rail forces and operational parameters such as tractive efforts. It is often found that most train-turnout interaction models do not consider the time dependent ballast degradation. Such ballast degradation later causes differential settlement and aggravates impact forces acting on partial and unsupported sleepers and bearers. Furthermore, localised ballast breakages underneath any railseat increase the likelihood of centre-bound cracks in railway sleepers and bearers due to the unbalanced support. This paper presents a numerical simulation of a standard-gauge concrete bearer at crossing panel, taking into account the tensionless nature of ballast support. The finite element model was calibrated using static and dynamic responses using past experiments. In this paper, the influences of topologic asymmetry on both sagging and hogging behaviours of crossing bearers are firstly investigated. In addition, it is the first to demonstrate the effects of sleeper length on the design consideration of turnout bearers in crossing panel. The outcome of this study will improve the railway turnout construction and maintenance criteria in order to improve train-turnout interaction and ride comfort.
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Train derailments can mainly result in not only financial losses in the form of damaged rolling stock and infrastructure, but also more importantly in causalities and operational shut-down. Therefore, it is crucial for the railway... more
Train derailments can mainly result in not only financial losses in the form of damaged rolling stock and infrastructure, but also more importantly in causalities and operational shut-down. Therefore, it is crucial for the railway industry to sustain a reliable and efficient operation and eliminate safety concerns. Analysis of accidents caused by train derailment is highlighted as one of the most crucial steps in the risk management chain. Considering various operational environment, the analysis enables reduction in the occurrence of derailment and prevents derailments in the most cost-efficient manner, as a variety of different causes and their frequency and severity are determined. In this paper, the methodology includes gathering and analysis of information on major derailments occurring at the turnouts from the UK. The causes have been categorised and then prioritised in accordance with the proportion of train derailments occurring within each category. The research objective is to determine the proportion of train derailments at turnouts and provide a starting point for the detailed analysis. In short, the aim of the paper is firstly to understand which factors under which circumstances pose the greatest risk at turnouts, secondly to quantitatively evaluate the relationship between derailment severity and frequency and thirdly, to determine the characteristics that cause major derailment and compare results with the characteristics in mainlines. The review analyses train derailments in UK over the last 15 years and demonstrates that the overall number of derailments have declined gradually and most derailments have occurred in yards. The dominant causes are identified as operational failures and component faults during track-train interaction, and track geometry problems are also seen to have a significant impact on derailment at turnouts, particularly in shunting yards. Furthermore, literature-based recommendations are used to address the issues arising from risks. The research outcomes are expected to aid the rail industry in developing, evaluating, prioritizing and gaining different perspective of derailment at turnouts to efficiently improve transportation safety and also to open a new gate to better understand the existing risk on railway turnouts.
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