A SURVEY AND PERSPECTIVE FOR IMPROVING MAINTENANCE EFFICIENCY OF RAILWAY STRUCTURES

Abstract

 Improving the efficiency of maintenance is essential to realizing sustainable railways; however, there has been little progress in organizing and sharing existing work across the division, which is essential for introducing effective digital technology. Through joint research with the Railway Technical Research Institute, Shikoku Railway Company is conducting a survey of existing maintenance works across all relating divisions, and is proceeding with sharing and organizing the results. This research focuses on investigating the current status of the structure division. The survey revealed the characteristics of railway structure maintenance that requires time for transportation other than inspections, and manual labor is required for briddge inspections at the Seto Ohashi section, which are unique to JR Shikoku. In addition, the development of methods for detecting bridge support abnormaritties using track displacements, and measuring the height and distance of station platforms using images of the train front are also located as maintenance labor-saving policies.