Increasing the Readiness of Railway Traffic Control Devices Using a Functional Test Generation Method

Abstract

Railway traffic control (RTC) equipment are technical devices developed for maintaining the safety of rail vehicle traffic operation, and must satisfy certain requirements related to a specific level of traffic safety and effectiveness. They are designed to ensure operational reliability under the intended application conditions throughout their entire service life. Regardless of their type and kind, however, they must behave in accordance with the assumed functional rules and requirements. This is why periodic tests of their correct operation are so crucial. Functional tests are applied to this end. They are employed in the course of device design and approval for use as well as in equipment operational diagnostics. Previous methods for generating test sets and their processing have been intuitive and often rely on the experience of testers that have been acquired in the course of implementing other tests. Such tests may be incomplete or fail to take into account all studied functions. Therefore, this article presents a proprietary method for generating functional tests covering railway traffic control devices that improve their readiness. The authors describe a test determination procedure algorithm and specify the conditions to be met by a test set and by optimization criteria. The article ends with a computer-based exemplification of the developed functional test generation method.