Model Predictive Control for Rail Condition-Based Maintenance: A Multilevel Approach

This paper develops a multilevel decision making approach based on model predictive control (MPC) for condition-based maintenance of rail. We address a typical railway surface defect called "squat", in which three maintenance actions can be considered: no maintenance, grinding, and replacement. A scenario-based scheme is applied to address the uncertainty in the deterioration dynamics of the key performance indicator for each track section, and a piecewise-affine model is used to approximate the expected dynamics, which is to be optimized by a scenario-based MPC controller at the high level. A static optimization problem involving clustering and mixed integer linear programming is solved at the low level to produce an efficient grinding and replacing schedule. A case study using real measurements obtained from a Dutch railway line between Eindhoven and Weert is performed to demonstrate the merits of the proposed approach.