Railroad Deterioration Dynamic Model Using System Dynamics Theory: A Case Study

Determining the model of railroad degradation can play an important role in preventing failures and, consequently, reducing maintenance costs in the railway industry. Railroad deterioration model is known as the most practical of such models. However, current deterioration models are static models that focus only on the independent effects of some of the parameters affecting deterioration.This paper proposed a new railroad deterioration dynamic model based on System Dynamics (SD) theory. SD as a scientific attitude analyzes the system's behavior over time through its feedback structure. The proposed model, in addition to studying the simultaneous effects of different parameters, evaluates the railroad deterioration dynamically.Implementation and validation of the proposed model of deterioration, using a real example of Iran's railways, indicates the accuracy of the obtained results. Another great consequence of proposed dynamic model is determining the deterioration function in terms of time in Iran railway. This function can be used to predict the deterioration of the railroad in future periods. This function has the ability to configure to other railway networks in the world.