Automated calculation of the available capacity of railway station elements
To assess the transportation capacity and safety of the international transport corridors of the Belarusian Railway, it is necessary to know the capacity of the railway infrastructure, which is largely determined by the capacity of railway stations to pass and process trains.
Determining the capacity of railway stations is a complex and time-consuming part of calculating the available capacity of a railway.
By order of the Belarusian Railway, the laboratory has developed the automated control system «Railway station capacity», which was put into commercial operation in 2013 and installed at 45 railway stations.
The main issues that were resolved during the execution of the work:
- development of an algorithm and automation of calculation of the throughput of switch necks;
- algorithm development and automation of calculation of the capacity of tracks and parks;
- algorithm development and automation of calculation of processing capacity of sorting devices;
- creating a clear interactive program interface;
- development of output forms for presentation of calculation results in electronic and printed form.
Algorithms for calculating the capacity of station elements are developed on the basis of Methodological recommendations for calculating the throughput and processing capacity of railway structures and devices.
The program consists of a main window, which offers a list of railway stations and function buttons: «upload station diagram», «perform calculation», «edit station diagram», «calculation results».
After selecting the railway station of interest, a station diagram is displayed on the screen, divided into elements: switch necks, parks, sorting devices. Each of the elements is interactive. The results of calculations of the capacity of the station elements can be exported to the Microsoft Word editor, and printed as a decorated document with diagrams, source data and results.
The program allows you to simulate various options for changing the technological times of occupation of the switch neck, the park, the sorting device of the railway station and to estimate the capacity and its reserve. The software product enables the operator to make changes to the station circuit and then calculate the throughput of the modified circuit of the station element.
