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Surname, Initial(s). (2012) Title of the thesis or dissertation. PhD. (Chemistry)/ M.Sc. (Physics)/ M.A. (Philosophy)/M.Com. (Finance) etc. [Unpublished]: University of Johannesburg. Retrieved from: https://ujcontent.uj.ac.za/vital/access/manager/Index?site_name=Research%20Output (Accessed: Date).
Analysis of factors undermining the reliability of railway track in South Africa
A Minor Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfilment of the Degree of
MAGISTER INGENERIAE / MAGISTER PHILOSOPHIAE
in
ENGINEERING MANAGEMENT
at the
FACULTY OF ENGINEERING AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT
of the
UNIVERSITY of JOHANNESBURG
by
Mulalo Mukwena
February 2018
SUPERVISOR: Prof JHC Pretorius
CO-SUPERVISOR: Dr A Wessels
DECLARATION
I declare that the minor dissertation submitted for the Magister Philosophiae in Engineering Management degree to the University of Johannesburg, apart from the help recognized, is my own work and has not previously been submitted to another university or institution of higher education for a degree.
Signed at Johannesburg on this ______day of ______2018.
Signature______Mulalo Mukwena
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ABSTRACT
Various factors have been highlighted as causes of reliability deficiency for railway track, globally. It is rather opaque as to which of these factors are prevalent in the South African railway industry. The study develops a framework for identifying and classifying causes of reliability deficiency for Railway Track (also referred to as Permanent way Infrastructure). The researcher employed the exploratory sequential mixed methods; a qualitative research in a form of structured interviews was conducted and the subsequent results were used to build a quantitative research survey through which, the researcher solicited responses from 52 respondents. Target respondents were mainly engineers, project managers, and Technicians experienced in the management of Railway infrastructure. Findings reveal that Poor maintenance policies, strategies and implementations is the most pervasive factor causing reliability deficiency of railway Track in South Africa whilst, Insufficient funding and Aging rail network became the second and third prevalent factors, respectively. The research also concluded, among other things, that; Track components used in South Africa are as good as those used by other major railway organizations globally. The study recommended that; railway organizations in the country should priorities the replacement of old infrastructure, adequate funding should be made available for construction of new railway lines, maintenance and rehabilitation projects, and as part of continuous improvements, railway organizations should realign and modernize their maintenance strategies and implementations.
Keywords: Railway infrastructure, Railway Track, Permanent way, Reliability
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
DECLARATION ...... 1 ABSTRACT ...... 2 LIST OF TABLES ...... 6 LIST OF FIGURES ...... 7 LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ...... 10 1. INTRODUCTION ...... 12 1.1 Background ...... 12 1.2 Problem Statement and Research Question...... 14 1.3 Research Objectives ...... 15 1.4 Demarcation of Study ...... 16 1.5 Research Report Structure and Overview ...... 16 1.6 Chapter Summary ...... 18 2. SOUTH AFRICA’S PERWAY INFRASTRUCTURE ...... 19 2.1 Railway Developments in South Africa ...... 19 2.2 The Structure of South African Railway Industry ...... 25 2.3 Perway Infrastructure ...... 31 2.3.1 Transport Telecommunications (Telecom) ...... 32 2.3.2 Civil Engineering Structures ...... 33 2.3.3 Train Authorisation Systems ...... 35 2.3.4 Electricals (OHTE and Substations) ...... 38 2.3.5 Permanent Way (Perway) ...... 40 2.4 Chapter Summary ...... 41 3 PERWAY INFRASTRUCTURE FAILURES ...... 42 3.1 Introduction ...... 42 3.2 Ballast and Sub-Ballast Failures ...... 42 3.3 Sleepers Failures ...... 43 3.3.1 Failure mechanism of wooden sleepers ...... 44 3.3.2 Failure mechanism of steel sleepers ...... 46 3.3.3 Failure mechanism of concrete sleepers...... 47
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3.4 Rail Failures ...... 49 3.4.1 Rail Corrugations ...... 51 3.4.2 Rolling contact fatigue defects ...... 54 3.4.3 Squat defects ...... 56 3.4.4 Other Rail failures ...... 56 3.5 Chapter Summary ...... 58 4 RELIABILITY ENGINEERING ...... 59 4.1 Introduction ...... 59 4.2 Defining Reliability ...... 59 4.3 Reliability Engineering...... 61 4.4 Reliability and Failure ...... 61 4.5 Reliability deficiency in Perway Infrastructure ...... 63 4.6 Chapter Summary ...... 64 5 LITERATURE REVIEW ...... 65 5.1 Introduction ...... 65 5.2 Factors Identified through Literature Review ...... 65 5.2.1 Poor design of components and systems ...... 65 5.2.2 Manufacturing defects and inherent flaws ...... 66 5.2.3 Poor maintenance policies, strategies and implementations ...... 67 5.2.4 Organisational rigidity and complexity ...... 70 5.2.5 Lack of critical skilled personnel ...... 71 5.2.6 Human error ...... 72 5.3 Factors identified during Interviews with Industry experts ...... 74 5.3.1 Insufficient funding ...... 74 5.3.2 Aging rail network ...... 76 5.3.3 Poor rail/wheel interaction management ...... 77 5.3.4 Excess Loads ...... 77 5.4 Chapter Summary ...... 78 6 RESEARCH APPROACH ...... 79 6.1 Introduction ...... 79 6.2 Research Paradigm ...... 80 6.3 Research Approach ...... 81 6.4 Research Design ...... 84
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6.5 Research Method ...... 85 6.5.1 Qualitative research method ...... 86 6.5.2 Quantitative research method ...... 86 6.6 Chapter Summary ...... 89 7 RESEARCH FINDINGS ...... 90 7.1 Introduction ...... 90 7.2 Qualitative Research ...... 90 7.3 Quantitative Research ...... 91 7.3.1 Poor design of components and systems ...... 91 7.3.2 Manufacturing defects and inherent flaws ...... 92 7.3.3 Poor maintenance policies, strategies and implementations ...... 93 7.3.4 Organisational rigidity and complexity ...... 93 7.3.5 Human errors ...... 94 7.3.6 Lack of critical skilled personnel ...... 95 7.3.7 Aging rail network ...... 95 7.3.8 Insufficient funding ...... 96 7.3.9 Excess loads ...... 96 7.3.10 Poor rail/wheel interaction management ...... 97 7.4 Classification of Factors ...... 97 7.5 Chapter Summary ...... 99 8 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION ...... 100 8.1 Conclusions ...... 100 8.2 Recommendations ...... 101 8.3 Future work ...... 101 9 REFERENCES ...... 102 APPENDIXES ...... 107
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LIST OF TABLES
CHAPTER 3: PERWAY INFRASTRUCTURE FAILURES
Table 3.1: Ranking of concrete sleeper failure modes
Table 3.2: Types of corrugation and their characteristics
CHAPTER 6: RESEARCH APPROACH
Table 6.1: Four main research paradigms (Creswell, 2014)
Table 6.2: Alternative research designs
Table 6.3: Research Methods
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LIST OF FIGURES
CHAPTER 2: SOUTH AFRICA’S PERWAY INFRASTRUCTURE
Figure 2.1: The Structure of South African Rail network
Figure 2.2: TFR Rail Network
Figure 2.3: Gautrain Route Map
Figure 2.4: Railway Infrastructure components
Figure 2.5: Kaaimans River bridge
Figure 2.6: Round Culvert
Figure 2.7: Triple Barre Box Culvert
Figure 2.8: Set of Points
Figure 2.9: Railway Signal
Figure 2.10: Simplified CTC display
Figure 2.11: Overhead wire and catenary in Bridgeport
Figure 2.12: Sectional view of Perway Infrastructure
CHAPTER 3: PERWAY INFRASTRUCTURE FAILURES
Figure 3.1: Wooden sleeper failure as a result of fungal decay
Figure 3.2: End splitting of wooden sleeper
Figure 3.3: Wooden sleeper under Termite attack
Figure 3.4: Corrosion in a steel sleeper
Figure 3.5(a): Terminology used for directions in rails
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Figure 3.5 (b): Terminology used for planes in rails
Figure 3.5 (c): Terminology used for rail position
Figure 3.6: Plastic flow associated with long pitch corrugation
Figure 3.7 (a): shell cracks
Figure 3.7 (b): gauge corner checking cracks
Figure 3.7 (c): Earlier stages of flacking defects
Figure 3.8: Large squat on the Running surface of a rail
CHAPTER 4: RELIABILITY ENGINEERING
Figure 4.1: Failure rate Bathtub curve
Figure 4.2: Major components of product effectiveness
CHAPTER 5: RELIABILITY ENGINEERING
Figure 5.1: Factors influencing the performance of rail infrastructure
Figure 5.2: Maintenance Strategy
Figure 5.3: General failure curve
Figure 5.4: Overloaded passenger trains
CHAPTER 6: RESEARCH APPROACH
Figure 6.1: Overview of the process followed
Figure 6.2: summary of the respondent’s’ qualifications
Figure 6.3: outline of respondent’s’ designations
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Figure 6.4: Respondents’’ years of experience within the railway sector
Figure 6.5: Summary of the research approach
CHAPTER 7: RESEARCH FINDINGS
Figure 7.1: Poor design of components and systems
Figure 7.2: Manufacturing defects and inherent flaws
Figure 7.3: Poor maintenance policies, strategies and implementations
Figure 7.4: Organizational rigidity and complexity
Figure 7.5: Human errors
Figure 7.6: Lack of critical skills in the country
Figure 7.7: Aging rail network
Figure 7.8: Insufficient funding
Figure 7.9: Excess loads
Figure 7.10: Poor management of rail/wheel interaction
Figure 7.11: Summary of the results finding
Figure 7.12: A pareto diagram of the research results
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LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS
AREMA: American Railway Engineering and Maintenance-of-Way Association
CTC: Centralised Traffic Control
FRA: Federal Railroad Administration
IHHA: International Heavy Haul Association
IMF: International Monetary Fund
MDS: Market Demand Strategy
MTBF: Mean time between failures
MTTF: mean time to failure
NGP: New Growth Path
NIC: New Industrialised Countries
NZASM: Netherlands South Africa Railway Company
OFS: Orange Free State
OHTE: Overhead Track Equipment
Perway: Permanent Way
PPP: Public Private Partnerships
PRASA: Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa
RAMS: Reliability, Availability, Maintainability, and Safety
RCF: Rolling contact fatigue
ROA: Railway of Australia
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ROCOF: rate of occurrence of failures
RSR: Railway Safety Regulator
SARCC: South African Rail Commuter Corporation
SAR&H: South African Railways & Harbours
SATS: South African Transport Services
SONA: State of the Nation Address
TFR: Transnet Freight Rail
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CHAPTER ONE
1. INTRODUCTION
1.1 Background South Africa is considered to be one of the New Industrialised Countries [NIC], these are countries whose economies have not yet reached developed country status but have, in a macroeconomic sense, outpaced their developing counterparts. Another characterization of NICs is that of nations undergoing rapid economic growth [usually export-oriented]. According to the latest projections from the IMF, published by Bloomberg, South Africa is the second biggest economy on the African continent and it continues to narrow in on Nigeria [the current biggest economy in Africa] (Writer, 2016).
However, from a Civilian’s point of view, South Africa is simply a developing state characterised by a mixed economy, high poverty levels and inequality. Informed by these characteristics, in 2010, the South African Government launched the New Growth Path framework [NGP]. The NGP identifies infrastructure development as one of the key drivers in pursuit of socio- economic objectives aimed at eradication of poverty and inequality.
In February 2012, during the State of the Nation Address (SONA), the South African President made pronouncements on the National Infrastructure Plan, aimed at addressing South Africa’s infrastructure deficit to boost economic growth (The Presidency, 2012). In the centre of this plan was the 200 billion rand allocated to rail projects such as the expansion of the Iron Ore Export channel, improvements to the Durban-Gauteng Rail corridor and the development of a new manganese export channel through the Port of Ngqura in Nelson Mandela Bay.
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These projects form part of Transnet’s Market Demand Strategy (MDS), aimed at expanding and modernising the country’s ports, rail and pipelines infrastructure to promote economic growth in South Africa. The impact of the MDS projects cannot be overemphasised; they are inextricably linked to the growth of South Africa, as a country. The MDS, if well implemented, has a potential of turning South Africa into a key player in the global freight industry. As a result, the country is expected to experience a freight modal shift from road to rail; were more volumes of railway-friendly commodities shall be conveyed through the railway system instead of the road transportation system. The socioeconomic impacts of the freight modal shift from road to rail are massive; they range from reduction of greenhouse gas emissions to lowering the cost of doing business in South Africa (Department of Environmental Affairs, 2015).
All these efforts and investment are aimed at developing South Africa as a country, and improving the living conditions of South Africans as a people. The South African Railway system has a potential to lower the cost of doing business in South Africa, however, it is not without any challenges. According to a Masters in Engineering Management Thesis done by Yakubu Jidayi, of Stellenbosch University, South African Railway transport systems has been suffering from reliability challenges due to its aging infrastructure and high utilisation of its physical assets (Jidayi, 2015). This view was also expressed on a continental spectrum, by the African Development Bank, which stated that Africa runs a risk of not realising its full potential in exploiting its abundant natural resources and wealth due to the current conditions of existing railways infrastructure and rolling stock which is poor and appalling, as a result of lack of investment in infrastructure (African Development Bank , 2015).
Lack of reliability of such a huge economic enabler could have dire consequences on the country’s economy and its growth prospects. With so much at stake, this paper aims to identify and analyse factors undermining the reliability of Railway Track (Perway Infrastructure) within the South African
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railway system. The paper also sought to compare these factors in order to rank the most predominant factors so that railway organisations in the country could prioritise resolving the most impactful factors.
1.2 Problem Statement and Research Question
According to the National Railway Policy Green paper, compiled by the South African National Department of Transport, South African rail network amounts to a total of approximately 22 298 route kilometres, and a total track distance of 30 400km which makes the South African Rail network the eleventh largest Rail network in the world. Such a network is the largest in Africa, actually, Transnet Freight Rail, which is the South African Railway operator, owns and operates 80% of Africa’s total Rail network (Department of Transport, 2015).
The green paper goes further to clarify that, albeit South African rail network ranks eleventh by route kilometres, many of those route kilometres are underutilised, resulting in the network ranking lower when compared to other rail networks on the basis of performance measures such as passenger journeys and/or volumes of freight tons transported.
The South African railway network is faced with various challenges such as obsolesce and underutilization; these challenges gave birth to an uncompetitive nature of the rail network. According to the green paper, the South African railway network have lost both its ability to compete with the road transportion system locally, as well as its aptitude to support exporters in competing effectively and efficiently in the global market. (Department of Transport, 2015)
In his thorough explanation of what Reliability Engineering is, Patrick D. T. O’connor emphasised on the cost of reliability in cases of product/system failures. The author used the most practical example of warranty issued against the purchase of any electronic product from the outlets or manufacturers to arrive to a conclusion that; lack of reliability is costly to both
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the manufacturer, the seller and the end-user. At the minimum, the manufacturer will suffer high warranty cost and reputational damage, whilst the customer will suffer inconvenience (O'Connor, 2010). This typical scenario is applicable even on the railway system as well; when the customer’s goods will fail to arrive/depart on time due to railway infrastructure failures.
According to Analysis of the causes of train accidents, conducted by the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) in America, Permanent way infrastructure failures were found to be the major course of train derailments. According to this study, which was conducted based on train derailment information from the Federal Railroad Administration, broken rails were the major cause of derailment on main lines, yards, and siding tracks for the period 2001 to 2010. (Xiang , et al., 2012)
The research question is: What are the most predominant factors undermining the reliability of Permanent way Infrastructure in the South African Railway industry?
1.3 Research Objectives
The aim of this study was to identify and classify factors undermining the reliability of Permanent way Infrastructure in the South African Railway industry. This aim was achieved through the following objectives:
Review the available theory to identify factors that are causing reliability deficiency for railway infrastructure, in general Interview industry experts on the identified factors Conduct a quantitative survey within the railway industry in South Africa to consolidate and generalise the local opinion as to which of these factors are most predominant in South Africa. Compare the identified factors using pareto analysis, to establish the priority
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1.4 Demarcation of Study
This study is limited to the South African Railway industry; however, provision was made to study general reliability challenges from available literature. The researcher used purposive sampling to obtain inputs from experienced engineers who are currently active in the railway infrastructure maintenance, operation and management sphere.
The intended output of the study was a prioritised list of the most critical factors undermining the reliability of Perway infrastructure in the South African railway industry.
1.5 Research Report Structure and Overview
This research report/ dissertation is structured and presented in eight chapters as outlined below:
Chapter 1: Introduction
This chapter introduces the problem statement, the aim of the research as well as the objectives undertaken to answer the research questions. The chapter also introduces the background pertaining the Railway infrastructure in South Africa. Most importantly, the chapter outlines the structure of the dissertation.
Chapter 2: South Africa’s Permanent way Infrastructure Chapter 2 narrates the historic developments of railway in South Africa. The chapter also introduces the structure of the railway infrastructure in South Africa, it most importantly narrows the scope of the research thereby discussing the Permanent way infrastructure, which is the major part of this research.
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Chapter 3: Perway Infrastructure Failures Chapter 3 outlines some of the most prevalent failure modes of various Permanent way components. This chapter further narrows the research scope to individual components of the Railway track.
Chapter 4: Reliability Engineering Chapter 4 is arguably the beginning of the research study, the chapter creates a link between the known Perway Infrastructure and the theory of Reliability Engineering. The chapter starts by introducing Reliability engineering, and ends by describing the character of an unreliable Perway infrastructure (Railway Track).
Chapter 5: Literature Review Chapter 5 discusses the Factors undermining the reliability of railway infrastructure in General. This chapter leads to the formation of the structured interview questionnaire (used for the qualitative survey).
Chapter 6: Research Approach Chapter 6 outlines the research paradigm, the approached employed, the research design, as well as the methods used for data collection and analysis.
Chapter 7: Research Findings Chapter 7 contains the findings from the conducted structured interviews (qualitative research) followed by the results of the online quantitative survey. The chapter ends by classifying the studied factors, thus provide the list of priorities.
Chapter 8: Conclusions and Recommendations The overall conclusions and recommendations derived from this research study are presented in this chapter. The chapter summarises the answers to the research questions by presenting a recommended list of three
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highest priority factors undermining the reliability of Perway infrastructure in the South African railway industry.
1.6 Chapter Summary
The chapter introduced the research problem and expounded on the relevance of the study. The aim of the research as well as the objectives undertaken was also discussed meticulously.
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CHAPTER TWO
2. SOUTH AFRICA’S PERMANENT WAY INFRASTRUCTURE
2.1 Railway Developments in South Africa In South Africa, Railway transportation system was established in 1860 as a private enterprise when the first steam train was launched in Durban, replacing the ox and horse wagon (Van Lingen, 1960). According to available literature, railway development was influenced/compounded by two main drivers namely; exploitation of newly discovered mineral wealth and political victories/advent. The following major events occurred after the Natal Railway was established until the end of the 19th century: Approximately three years after the launch of the 3.2 km Railway Infrastructure in Durban on the 26th of June 1860, a 70 km railway Infrastructure (known as “The Cape Line”) was constructed between Cape Town and Wellington through Eerste River and Stellenbosch (Van Lingen, 1960). Following the discovery of diamonds in Kimberly by the year 1868, the South African railway industry grew by big margins; by the year 1885 Kimberley and Cape Town were successfully linked by the railway system. Politically, the Colony had already taken over the private lines around Cape Town to form the Cape Government Railways (CGR) (Van Rensburg, 1996). After the country had gained its independence through the Battle of Majuba in 1881, and Paul Kruger was made president in 1883 there were major Gold discovery in Transvaal which lead to the CGR extending its railway infrastructure to the Transvaal border through the Orange Free State. The gold discovery lead to a Railway infrastructure being constructed to connect Kimberley and Vryburg, following an agreement signed between Cecil John Rhodes, on behalf of the British
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South Africa Company, and the Cape Government in 1889 (Solomon, 1983). Politically, the Orange Free State government decided to decree to take over all the railways within its boundaries, forming the OFS Government Railways by September 1896. Through the established Netherlands South Africa Railway Company (NZASM) in June 1887, South Africa’s first interstate railway was constructed to connect Pretoria and Maputo through Komatipoort. The interstate railway infrastructure was completed and opened in 1895. This interstate railway line includes the construction of the famous ZASM tunnel which still remains an epitome of a brilliant railway design and execution (Ball, 2016).
There were several lines that were constructed to connect with the ones mentioned above; such as the Port Elizabeth line, passing through Noupoort to De Aar being later extended through Colesburg to enter Orange Free State through Norvals Pont in 1989. Another example is that of the Natal Government Railways which had already reached the Transvaal border station through Newcastle by April 1891.
As per the National Policy Green paper drafted by the South African department of transport; in the 19th century, the South African Railway system was a colonial project mainly used for military, agrarian and mining reasons. Thus, the rail network was developed for the benefit of colonial powers; it had no regard for socio-economic needs of the colonies nor those who lived in the colonies (Department of Transport, 2015).
The end of the 19th century was marked by the Second Anglo-Boer War where the British Empire reaffirmed their dominance over the Boer in South Africa. The Anglo-boer war, like any other political conflict saw the country’s Transport infrastructure, mainly the railway being damaged through
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sabotaged actions. Post the Anglo-boer War, the following events marked the developments of South African Railways:
Certain transport services were nationalised through the promulgation of the South Africa Act of 1909, which gave birth to the South African Railways & Harbours (SAR&H) in 1910 which was aimed at serving the whole country. The South Africa Act of 1909 also prohibited any construction of railway infrastructure aimed at conveying of public traffic, port, harbour, or similar work. If anyone wanted to construct such an infrastructure, they would need a prior Parliament sanction (The South African Railways, 1947). Politically, a new government was formed in 1924 following the 1914 labour unrest rebellion which piggy bagged on the famous World War II which was later followed by economic depression. The country had already constructed up to 9 000 km of railway since the inception of SAR&H. The 9000 km railway addition was meant to unlock agricultural potential and still neglected the transportation and services needs of the entire masses of the country (Van Rensburg, 1996). History also recorded that, in the wake of the World War I; South African troops as a British dominion, conquered German troops in South West Africa. Following this victory, the administration of the railways the former German colony was taken over by South Africa in the year 1915 (Silvester & Gewald, 2003). When a new government was formed in 1924, the country’s railway infrastructure was also increased by taking over the New Cape Central Railway, which was the last privately owned railway line (Ball, 2015). World War II saw an increased use of South Africa’s railway infrastructure. South Africa experienced a major economic growth after the World War II, SAR&H had to react to demand increase by building more railway lines and rolling stock manufacturing workshops since South Africa had become a major exporter of minerals and agricultural products.
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Some of the events that marked this era was; the opening of a massive workshops complex at Koedoespoort, the opening of the new Johannesburg station, the opening of a goods handling depot in Kaserne as well as the commissioning of the first crossing of two trains through remote control, an event which gave birth to Centralised Traffic Control (CTC), in the year 1955. With the emergence of all these new railway lines, the organisation also decided to divert the export of Manganese to the Port Elizabeth line, instead of the Natal main line. A lot of other railway lines were constructed during this era to try and match the increased demand for minerals and supplies from South Africa. The railway industry continued to enjoy substantial growth in the 60’s. This era was marked by serious milestones such as; 100 years celebration since the first public train, the country become a Republic on 31 May 1961, most importantly, the first locally manufactured electric locomotive was accepted by SAR in January 1963. Apart from gaining more dominance in the ore and coal exportation, the county witnessed more developments in the 70’s century; it was in this era when SAR introduced the heavy haul goods trains in South Africa. The first experiment being that of the 1,2 km long train, using Seven diesel locomotives to convey 9 000 metric tons of ore. After a successful implementation of the heavy haul, the bar was raised by the 2, 65 km long train, conveying 21 800 gross tons of coal in 1979. In the very same year, a test train broke the record by reaching 245 km/h. The Road Transport Act 74 of 1977 announced the first steps towards the relaxation of tough road transport regulation by allowing permits to be issued more freely as well as increasing grounds for permit applications. The high degree of Road transport regulations had played a huge role in protecting railways from open competition.
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Following the South African Transport Services Act No. 65 of 1981, SAR&H restructured itself into five business divisions; railway, harbour, road transport, aviation and pipeline operations. The name SAR&H was changed to South African Transport Services (SATS) in the year 1981. Unlike SAR&H, SATS was formed to operate on business principles with an aim of exploiting economic interests and providing transport services to the Republic (Berry, 2004). The railway industry suffered massive setbacks during the 80’s century, mainly due to the Sanctions that were imposed to South Africa against Apartheid. The effects of these sanctions lead to severe capital shortage and reduction of maintenance programs. The railway infrastructure deterioration happened simultaneously with the simultaneously with the total deregulation of road transport through the promulgated Transport Deregulation Act No. 80 of 1988. The Transport Deregulation Act resulted in a massive expansion of the road transport industry, at the impediment of railway revenue. It was only in 1990 when, SATS was transformed into a limited liability company. This fully State-owned entity responsible for a vast and strategic transport network was named Transnet Limited (Transnet, 2010). Transnet was divided into several divisions; freight and long distance passenger rail transportation was handled by the Spoornet division. Along the establishment of Transnet, the South African Rail Commuter Corporation (SARCC) emerged to handle commuter rail services. The formation of Transnet and SARCC did not bring much change to the deterioration of the available railway infrastructure; the infrastructure was still underutilised and insufficiently maintained.
Apart from the industrial and economic events detailed above, the 19th century was marked by the birth of democracy in 1994, which at the least meant that; the resources and assets of the state must serve the entire synthesis of South African masses, as opposed to the previous regime (Apartheid) which was designed to only serve the minority. This new
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political construct came with an increased need for better and more railway infrastructure for both economic reasons as well as public services. To this, Transnet responded by investing heavily in the railway infrastructure
Fast forward into the 21st century, railway industry was still addressing the inherent effects of inadequate infrastructure development and maintenance (Department of Transport, 2015). Apart from lost competitiveness, the following events occurred in the 21st century:
Under the Act of Parliament in 2002, South African established the Railway Safety Regulator. This organisation was established to promote and oversee safe railway operations through appropriate support, monitoring and enforcement (The National Government Handbook, 2012). The freight-focused division of Transnet (Spoornet) was renamed Transnet Freight Rail, in July 2007 following a decision by Transnet to adopt a monolithic brand. The railway infrastructure dedicated for passenger rail could not meet the vastly increasing demands of the rapidly changing society. A situation which gave birth to the amalgamation of the Metrorail and Shosholoza Meyl to form the Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa (PRASA) in replacement of the old SARCC, in the year 2009 (PRASA, 2012). One of the greatest achievements of this century was the launching of the Gautrain in May 2010, a high speed urban train developed to link Pretoria and Johannesburg as well as OR Tambo International Airport and Sandton. Travelling at maximum speeds of 160 to 180 kilometres per hour, this state-of-the-art rapid train offers world- class standards of public transportion with intrinsically high levels of reliability, safety, comfort and convenience for passengers. The advent of the Gautrain increased the standard gauge railway infrastructure in the country (Department of Transport, 2017).
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Apart from all these railway developments in South Africa, Transnet has developed a strategy to put their organisation in the forefront of heavy haul and the general freight transportation business. The organisation is currently executing a Market Demand Strategy which aims to unlock demand and increase the number of tonnage hauled per annum.
According to the then Transnet Group Chief Executive Mr Brian Molefe, Transnet is “poised to become one of the world's largest freight logistics groups. The Market Demand Strategy will see Transnet's revenue grow from R46bn in 2011/12 to R128bn in 2018/19." (Transnet, 2012)
2.2 The Structure of South African Railway Industry In comparison to other railway nations based on route kilometres, South African rail network is the eleventh largest, with a total track distance of 30 400km and 22 298 route kilometres. However, this network is mostly dominated by the Cape gauge, which is 1 067mm, also referred to as narrow gauge. Even though the initial railway lines of South Africa (Cape and Natal lines) adopted the standard British gauge of 1 435 mm, a decision was taken in the year 1873 to introduce a narrower gauge (1 065 mm). The narrow gauge was found to be more suitable for South Africa’s mountainous conditions. According to the green paper, if South Africa was to be compared with other rail networks based on performance measures such as passenger journeys or freight tons transported, the SA rail network would definitely rank lower that the current 11th position (Department of Transport, 2015).
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The network can be classified as follows:
The Structure of SA Rail Network (KM)
14 000
12 000
10 000
8 000
6 000 Distance (KM)
4 000
2 000
0 Core Branch lines Narrow Urban Gautrain Network Gauge Commuter Network Active Lines 12 727 3 928 313 2 228 80 Closed Lines 74 3 350 Lifted Lines 874
Figure 2.1: The Structure of South African Rail network
The South African Railway structure presented by figure 2.1 is a public asset, owned by the masses of South Africa, under the curatorship of three distinct but well integrated entities;
2.2.1 Transnet Freight Rail [TFR] TFR is the largest operating division of Transnet SOC Limited. In their own admission, TFR “is a world class heavy haul freight rail company that specialises in the transportation of freight. The company maintains an extensive rail network across South Africa that connects with other rail
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networks in the sub-Saharan region, with its rail infrastructure representing about 80% of Africa's total.” (Transnet, 2015).
The company is proud of its reputation for technological leadership beyond Africa as well as with-in Africa, where it is well-developed organisation, active in some 17 countries. According to the National Transport Master Plan 2005-2050, the Cape gauge used by TFR allows inter-connectivity and mutual usage of rolling stock and traction between neighbouring countries without any infrastructure complications (Department of Transport, 2009).
This operating division [TFR]: owns the entire Rail Network used for Freight Transportation in the country owns the Branch line network owns some of the railway lines used by PRASA has access agreements with PRASA, to uses some of the railway lines that enables TFR to access the ports runs a long distance passenger transportation business (Blue Train)
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TFR’s railway network is depicted by the figure below:
Figure 2.2: TFR Rail Network (Source: Transnet)
2.2.2 Passenger Rail Agency of South Africa [PRASA] PRASA Group consists of three main operating divisions, namely; PRASA Rail, PRASA Tech and PRASA Cres. PRASA Rail is the largest operating division of the three and it is responsible for the Metrorail commuter Services in the metropolitan areas as well as the long distance passenger rail services between the major cities, including regional passenger rail services. This organisation represents a national public transport market
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share of 15% through Metrorail services which includes Metro, Metro Plus and Business Express services. As a National Government Business Enterprise, PRASA is strategically focused on “positioning of railway as the backbone of public transport’ and operating in an integrated transport network, whilst delivering ‘public value” (PRASA, 2015). As per the figure provided in figure 2.1, PRASA owns 2 228 km of rail network which constitute active networks in Gauteng, Kwazulu Natal, and Western Cape provinces, as well as small-scale services on lines shared with TFR in Eastern Cape Province (Department of Transport, 2015).
2.2.3 Gautrain
Gauteng province is an economic hub of South Africa, characterised by high population, high migration rate, and a dire need for advanced public transport services. Based on this premises, the Gauteng Provincial Government entered into the largest Infrastructure Public Private Partnerships [PPP] in Africa, by signing a twenty-year concession agreement with Bombela Concession Company. This agreement lead to the construction of a state-of-the-art rapid rail network system named, Gautrain.
Gautrain was built to offer international standards of public transport with high levels of speed, safety, reliability, predictability and comfort. This world class, standard gauge rail network comprises of only 80 kilometres, of which 15 km is underground. The cape gauge was not used due to the following reasons;
Standard gauge offeres superior safety and comfort for passengers. It’s easier, quicker and less expensive to source the rolling stock for Standard gauge as compared to the Cape gauge. Standard gauge is more tolerant of track imperfections, thus making it less expensive to maintain.
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High travel speed (such as the required 160 km/h for the Gautrain) can be chieved when using Standard gauge.
Gautrain comprises of only two links, the first link connects Pretoria and Johannesburg and the other one is a link between OR Tambo International Airport and Sandton. See the figure below:
Figure 2.3: Gautrain Route Map (Source: Gautrain)
In closing, there are three main players in this industry, TFR, PRASA Rail and Gautrain. All these organisations are under the control of the state, even though there is a PPP in Gautrain.
It must however, be noted that there are a few private train operators that uses this national railway infrastructure. As indicate in the literature above,
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TFR owns most of South Africa’s Rail network, as such, this study was done based on TFR’s empirical data.
2.3 Permanent way Infrastructure A Railway infrastructure is a combination of various components that make up the right-of-way for trains to move from one point to another. A typical railway infrastructure consists of the following subsystems; Telecommunications (Telecoms) Electricals (OHTE and Substations) Train Authorisation Systems Civil Structures (Bridges, Culverts and Tunnels) Permanent Way (Perway), also referred to as Track
These subsystems are interconnected for the functionality of railway infrastructure, as per the figure below;
Figure 2.4: Railway Infrastructure components (Source: Transnet)
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2.3.1 Transport Telecommunications (Telecom) By definition, Telecommunications, which is also referred to as Telecom, “is the exchange of information over significant distances by electronic means and refers to all types of voice, data and video transmission. This is a broad term that includes a wide range of information transmitting technologies such as telephones (wired and wireless), microwave communications, fibre optics, satellites, radio and television broadcasting, the internet and telegraphs.”
A complete telecom circuit comprises of two stations, each equipped with a transmitter and a receiver. The transmitter and receiver at any station may be combined into a single device called a transceiver. Either electrical wire or copper cable, optical fibre, electromagnetic fields or light can be used as a medium for signal transmission (Newport, 2017). Wireless communications also exists in instances where data is transmitted via electromagnetic fields.
In most cases, telecommunication occur between two stations, it is however possible for a telecommunications network to exist in a form of multiple transmitting and receiving stations exchanging data among themselves (Newport, 2017). A typical example of a is that of the internet.
Telecom plays a crucial role in helping railway operators to ensure smooth operation of trains. In the past, most railway operators used analog telecommunications transmissions, which were transferred over copper wires. Lately, most telecommunications wiring is done with cables that are optimized for digital communication, such as fibre optic cables and digital phone lines. Owing to the fact that both analog and digital communications are based on electrical signals, transmitted data is received almost instantaneously, regardless of the distance. This allows people to quickly communicate with others across the entire Railway operation (TechTerms, 2014).
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According to a Thesis published by the Technical University of Denmark, “railway dependability on Telecom will increase even more. Capabilities and reliability of the communication technology chosen by railways will determine the capabilities and reliability of the railways themselves. Therefore, a good and reliable communication will be a basis for good and reliable railway system.” (Sniady, et al., 2015)
2.3.2 Civil Engineering Structures Another category or subsection of the Railway Infrastructure is that of Civil Engineering Structure, such as such as Railway Bridges, Culverts and Tunnels.
A bridge is a structure built to provide passage over the obstacle by spanning physical obstacles without closing the way underneath such as a body of water, valley, or road (Vijaykumar & Mohan, 2017). Vijaykumar & Mohan went further to clarify that bridges exists in various designs depending on the intended purpose, functionality, used material and budget available for bridge construction (Vijaykumar & Mohan, 2017).
The South African Rail network comprises a series of bridges used for the passage of trains.
Figure 2.5: Kaaimans River bridge (Source: Getty Images)
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Depending on purpose and functionality, a culvert is typically surrounded by soil, pipe shaped and made of reinforced concrete. In the main, a culvert is a structure used both as cross-drains for ditch relief and to allow water to flow under a road, railroad, trail, or similar obstruction from one side to the other side. Depending on the nature of requirement, different shapes and sizes such as round, box-like, elliptical, flat-bottomed and pear-shaped may be used for construction of culverts (Baby, et al., 2015).
Figure 2.6: Round Culvert Figure 2.7: Triple Barre Box Culvert (Sources: Flickr)
A tunnel is an underground or underwater passageway, dug through the surrounding soil/earth/rock and enclosed except for entrance and exit, commonly at each end. With its length greater than twice its diameter, a tunnel is typically known for being relatively long and narrow (Choubey, et al., 2017). Whilst the definitions of Railway Bridge, culvert and tunnels are lucidly clear, and could be categorised as permanent way infrastructure, it is worth noting that these Rail network subsets shall not form part of the scope of this study.
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2.3.3 Train Authorisation Systems
Trains are uniquely susceptible to collision due to the fact that they move on fixed rails. This susceptibility is exacerbated by the nature of train operations which is characterised by massive weight and the inherent inertia which makes it difficult for trains to stop quickly when encountering an impediment. To alleviate such a huge risk, Train Authorisation Systems are implemented to direct railway traffic with an aim of always keeping trains clear of each (Experts, 2017).
The need for Train Authorisation Systems was realised long time ago, when rail cars used to be hauled by horses or mules. During that period, early trains were preceded by a mounted flagman on a horse. Train drivers were directed by the use of hand and arm signals. Inconvenient weather conditions such as Fog and other conditions that caused poor- visibility gave rise to flags and lanterns. Wayside signalling dates back as far as 1832, and used utilized flags or balls that were visible from far afield. (Trains 4 Africa, 2016)
Train Authorisation System typically involves authority being passed from those responsible for each section of a rail network to the train crew (Experts, 2017). The system comprises of the following essential mechanisms:
2.3.3.1 Points
Points are described as track equipment whose function is to enable a railway train to move from one track to another. Their function or major purposes is served when a train is to change from one line to another. Points are a very significant equipment in that they allocate and control the movement of trains on specific lines especially where two lines are joined or at a junction (Metrorail, 2007).
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This track equipment is also vitally important in preventing unauthorized movements of trains, such as unlawful deviation of a train from its intended direction, which would often result in an accident or collision with another train. Below is a picture depicting a set of points:
Figure 2.8: Set of Points (Source: Metrorail)
2.3.3.2 Signal Another form of communication between a Train driver and the Train control centre is that of a Rail signal. A Rail signal is an apparatus, which provides visual information to the train driver about the availability of a specific line, as to whether it is safe to proceed or not (Metrorail, 2007). Railway signals are very important for regulating and safeguarding movements of trains at crossings as well as ensuring a safe following distance between trains that are travelling on the same line (Metrorail, 2007). The figure below depicts a typical Rail signal:
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Figure 2.9: Railway Signal (Source: quazoo.com)
2.3.3.3 Centralised Traffic Control Centralised Traffic Control (CTC) is a central point where a number of Rail signals are controlled, it is also referred to as a “control room” The control panels are the main facility in the CTC, for they enable operators to monitor and control the movements of trains remotely in their jurisdiction area (Metrorail, 2007). As displayed by the figure below, the panels are like a map on the wall with sets of points, route map, diagrams and displays:
Figure 2.10: Simplified CTC display
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Of assistance to the CTC is a Train describer system, which is used to identify trains and display the number allocated to a particular train on the CTC diagram, thereby showing the operator the location of the train (Metrorail, 2007). The aforementioned number is married to the train as it moves from one station to the other, which informs the operator of various locations of all the trains under his control at all times (Metrorail, 2007).
2.3.3.4 Interlocking Rail interlocking system is a mean of preventing any conflicting train movements. The system is designed in a way that makes it impossible to display a signal to proceed unless it is safe to do so (Railwaysignalling.eu, 2015). It combines and interlocks the points, signals and track circuits to ensure that no conflicting movements take place. This control mechanism is an interface between the operator and the aforementioned equipment (Metrorail, 2007).
2.3.4 Electricals (OHTE and Substations) Another fundamental subset of the Rail Network is the supply of energy, to keep the system running. There are various options of energy supply that may be used by any rail network, depending on the type of operations.
According to a narrative provided in the AREMA Manual of Railway Engineering, the interest in railway electrification as the main system for propulsion was realised during times of uncertainty in the energy industry. During these times, the world was experiencing a rise in fuel rose prices, accompanied by the oil embargos. (AREMA, 2010)
By definition and function, a railway electrification system supplies electrical energy to railway locomotives and multiple units so that they can operate without a local fuel supply or an on-board prime mover. Various Rail networks across the world uses several different electrification systems, depending on their network technicalities. The disadvantage
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about Railway electrification is the capital expenditure required, whilst the system offers the following advantages:
higher power-to-weight ratio, resulting in o fewer locomotives o faster acceleration o higher practical limit of power o higher limit of speed less environmental pollution, even if electricity is produced by fossil fuels reduced power loss at higher altitudes less noise pollution (quieter operation) lack of dependence on crude oil as fuel lower running cost of locomotives and multiple units lower maintenance cost of locomotives and multiple units
Figure 2.11: Overhead wire and catenary (Source: Quora)
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2.3.5 Permanent Way (Perway) The scope of this report is mainly focused on the Permanent way subsection of the Railway Infrastructure. Permanent way infrastructure comprises of a super structure (Track) and a sub structure (formation), as displayed by the figure below:
Figure 2.12: Sectional view of Perway Infrastructure (Bangladeshi Rail)
The sub-structure provides a foundation on which the Track (Superstructure) is laid. Ballast is laid on the prepared subgrade called formation. Ballast is packed between, below, and around the Sleepers to provide vertical and lateral stability to the track. In addition, Ballast also serve the following purposes:
Facilitating water drainage Bearing the load from the Sleepers Averting vegetation that might interfere with the railway track structure Holding the railway track in place during train passage
The superstructure comprises of the Rails and Sleepers, also known as Railroad ties. Rails are continuously joined via welding or by making use of fish-plates. Fastening systems are used to fix Rails to sleepers/railroad
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ties (RailCorp, 2012). Sleepers are transverse beams strategically located between Rails and Ballast to ensure appropriate load transfer and distribution from the Rails to the Ballast (Taherinezhad, et al., 2013). Moreover, Sleepers also serve the following functions: Support the rail and maintain track gauge Maintain constant rail spacing and rail inclination Ensure adequate mechanical strength in vertical and horizontal directions. Provide insulation between parallel rails Provide a platform for rail fastening systems
According to a study that seeks to allocate costs for Railway Infrastructure in USA, it was established that Railway Track and structures account for 10-50% of the Railway operating costs. The study also classified Perway as a key factor in determining the speed limits, as well as the size and weight limits for wagons and trains. Perway is so important to an extent that there are existing models used to analyse the fundamental Trade-off regarding investment in track structure and the variable cost of rail operations. (Martland, 2001)
2.4 Chapter Summary
This chapter introduced the historic development of Rail transportation systems in South Africa from inception to the current, modern infrastructure and operations. It sought to inform the reader as to how far the railway system has travelled and transformed with time as well as an overview of what comprises a railway infrastructure. The chapter was very broad in approach so as to provide more information in introducing the rail network. In the next chapter, the thesis shall narrow the focus into Perway components and their related failures.
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CHAPTER THREE
3 PERMANENT WAY INFRASTRUCTURE FAILURES
3.1 Introduction Permanent Way (also referred to as railway track or perway) mainly comprises of Rails, Sleepers, Ballast and Sub-Ballast. All these components have got inherent potential failures, which could subsequently result in failure of the entire Track. This chapter outlines some of the most prevalent failures that are observed in various Track (Perway) subsystems and components. This is meant to create a link or relationship between reliability engineering and the failures that may occur in the railway track.
3.2 Ballast and Sub-Ballast Failures
Ballast and sub-ballast form what is known as the sub-structure of the railway track. Not all railway infrastructures use ballast and sub-ballast; depending on the location of the infrastructure and the availability of resources, some tracks are ballast-less. It is however known and well recorded that ballasted tracks are the most popular, in comparison (Taherinezhad, et al., 2013).
According to John Waters (Railway Geotechnical Consultant) and Ernest Selig, sub-structure components have a major influence on the cost of railway maintenance, but due to the fact that their properties are more variable and difficult to define; researches and writer spend less attention on these substructure components, and rather prioritise the superstructure components (Waters & Selig , 1994).
As already explained in the previous chapter, Ballast has many functions in the railway infrastructure. The main functions are to provide vertical and lateral stability to the track, Bear the load from the Sleepers, facilitate water drainage, store fouling materials, and restore track geometry. As such, it is a
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major requirement that ballast material is be hard, angular, free from contamination, durable, and possess relatively large voids (Ali, et al., 2013).
According to a PhD study conducted by Wee Loon Lim published by the University of Nottingham, major track deterioration can be caused by the breakdown of ballast materials. A breakdown of ballast material may be caused by factors such as traffic over load, excessive tamping, infiltration of underlying materials and contamination by external materials such as wagon spillage (Lim, 2004).
In his Master’s Degree project, S.J Hassankiadeh analysed failure mode in substructure as (Hassankiadeh, 2011):
Crack failure in Ballast: Micro cracks and particle breakage Plastic deformation in Ballast: ballast pockets, erosion pumping, Ballast settlement, Ballast fouling, Shear failure in Ballast: breakage of the sharp edge Plastic deformation in Subgrade: Accumulative plastic deformation, consolidation settlement, frost action and attrition with mud pumping, Shear failure in Subgrade: progressive shear failure and massive shear failure,
Lim summarised ballast failure as being unable to maintain track geometry and being susceptible to ballast breakdown, thus causing fouling in ballast.
3.3 Sleepers Failures Sleepers are the superstructure component that distributes the load from the rails to the substructure. Sleepers are very influential towards the performance and safety of railway track (Taherinezhad, et al., 2013). Various types of Railway sleepers are used in South Africa and around the world, these include; wooden sleepers, steel sleepers, concrete sleepers, and compound sleepers (limited). Whilst very little is known about compound sleepers (new product), wooden sleepers and steel sleepers are no longer very popular demand in South Africa. Most of the railway infrastructure in the country use Concrete sleepers as opposed to the traditionally used
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Timber/wooden sleepers. Tanherinezhad et al. argued that the decision to use steel and concrete sleepers around the world was premised on limited resources (timber) and the rapid development of railway (Taherinezhad, et al., 2013).
3.3.1 Failure mechanism of wooden sleepers
According to a survey conducted by the Railway of Australia (ROA) were 2200 timber sleepers in Australia were studied, the following were found to be the major causes of failure to Timber sleepers; fungal decay, end splitting, termites, still sound, sapwood, shelling, rail cut, weathering, spike kill and knots (Ferdous & Manalo, 2014).
The report goes further to elaborate that, 53% of failures were caused by fungal decay, 10% were caused by end splitting and 7% was caused by termite attacks, whilst the other factors were only responsible for the balance of 30% (Ferdous & Manalo, 2014).
The most dominant mode of timber sleeper failure is the Fungal decay. This is due timber’s susceptibility to bio-deterioration which may result from many micro-organisms as timber is an organic material. Timber sleepers are mostly under Fungus attack during rainy seasons or in environments characterised by moisture (Ferdous & Manalo, 2014).
Figure 3.1: Wooden sleeper failure as a result of fungal decay
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According to Konstantinos Tzanakakis, wooden Sleeper failure due to end splitting arises when the sleeper is subjected to large transverse shear loading (Tzanakakis, 2013). This failure may also be experienced during the insertion of a screw-spike, used for the fastening apparatus which fastens the rail to the wooden sleeper.
Figure 3.2: End splitting of wooden sleeper
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According to “a strong hold for insect research”, Termites are eusocial insects mostly feed on dead plant material and cellulose, generally in the form of wood, leaf litter, soil, or animal dung. in an event where a termite attacks timber, it normally consumes all the materials which contain cellulose and the resultant damage is permanent (Tyagi & Veer, 2016).
Figure 3.3: Wooden sleeper under Termite attack
3.3.2 Failure mechanism of steel sleepers
There is very limited research on steel sleeper’s failure mechanism; however, it is well recorded in the engineering body of knowledge that; corrosion and fatigue cracking are the main reasons why steel sleepers are inferior.
Because sleepers are in direct contact with the substructure, steel sleepers are thus exposed to the risk of corrosion when installed in environments where the supporting soil or ballast is characterised by high concentration of salty elements (ARTC, 2009).
Fatigue failure may result from repeated stress caused by cyclic loading as well as the location of the rail-seat which is subjected to heavy shear that is vulnerable to fatigue cracking (Ferdous & Manalo, 2014).
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Figure 3.4: Corrosion in a steel sleeper
Whilst corrosion and fatigue cracks are the main steel sleepers’ failure mechanism, steel sleepers are also undesirable due to the following reasons: high electrical conductivity difficulty of packing it with ballast can only be used for specific rails which the sleeper would have been manufactured for
3.3.3 Failure mechanism of concrete sleepers Concrete sleepers are the mostly used type of sleepers in the world. In South Africa, mono-block pre-stressed concrete sleepers are the most used type of sleepers. These sleepers are not without any risk of failure, various studies across the world confirmed how concrete sleepers are so susceptible to failure. In their International concrete sleepers and Fastening System Survey, Dyk et al. ranked the most critical failure concerns internationally as follows:
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Table 3.1: Ranking of concrete sleeper failure modes
According to the results of the survey, Tamping damage, shoulder wear, cracking from centre binding and cracking from dynamic loads are the major failure modes, internationally.
According to Article published in the Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering, rail-seat deterioration is the most common failure mode for modern pre-stressed concrete sleepers world-wide. The article went further to report that, this type of failure is primarily caused either of the following; hydraulic pressure cracking, rail-seat abrasion, hydro abrasive erosion, freeze thaw cracking and chemical deterioration ( Bakharev & Struble, August 1997). According to a Failure mode and effect analysis of concrete ties study that was presented in the 9th International heavy haul Conference in China, a Rail-seat abrasion is caused by the relative movements between the concrete rail seat and the rail pad during train operations. This situation is perpetuated by the gradual wearing away of the cement paste from the concrete due to the frictional forces as the abrasive fine particles and the water penetrates the rail-seat pad interface (Zeman , et al., 2009).
Another major failure mode of concrete ties is that of High-impact loading. According to a study conducted in Australia, a high-magnitude wheel load can cause bending cracks in concrete sleepers if applied infrequently and
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for a short duration. The cracks of this nature are mostly detected in the sleeper’s mid-span and they eventually reduce the sleeper’s flexural stiffness. The engineering body of knowledge contains a lot of literature on concrete sleepers’ failure modes and effects analysis, published from various parts of the world.
3.4 Rail Failures
According to the Rail Defects handbook, a Track Engineering manual developed by Ralcorp, three factors determines the life of rails in a track:
Wear: wear mostly occur on the gauge face in sharper curves as a result of high wheel flanging forces. The manual also alluded to the fact that wear may also occur on the running surfaces of all rails as a result of wheel/rail interaction. The latter may also occur as a result of rail grinding during maintenance. Plastic Flows: both the low and high rails are not immune to plastic flows. Plastic flows occur mainly in curves, as result of applied wheel/rail contact stresses exceeding the strength of the material. This is observed in higher axle load (> 20 tonnes) operations. Defects: defects may develop in all rails and applied welds. There are various causes of rail defects, and if not addressed in timeously, they cause rail failure. The manual also made reference to the following rail defects; rail corrosion, rail damage, defective welds, piped rail, bolt hole cracks, horizontal and vertical split web, foot & web separation, and head & web separation.
For ease of reference, the manual also provides the following diagrams, detailing the applied terminology:
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Figure 3.5(a): Terminology used for directions in rails (RailCorp, 2012)
Figure 3.5 (b): Terminology used for planes in rails (RailCorp, 2012)
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Figure 3.5 (c): Terminology used for rail position (RailCorp, 2012)
The manual discusses in detail the characteristics, causes and effects of the following rail failures and also suggests the best treatment that can be applied (RailCorp, 2012).
3.4.1 Rail Corrugations
Rail corrugations are quasi-sinusoidal irregularities on the running surface of the rails (Grassie & Kalousek, 1993). There are two types of corrugations:
Short pitch: 30 to 90 mm wavelength which normally develops under lower axle loads (< 20 tonnes) operations. According to the Rail-Wheel handbook, it is believed that these corrugations result from the differential wear caused by the repetition of a longitudinal sliding action of the wheel on the rail (Lewis & Olofsson, 2009).
Long pitch: approximately 300 mm in wavelength which generally develops under higher axle load (> 20 tonnes) operations. They are
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perpetuated by the plastic flow of the rail material as a result of the undue wheel/rail contact stresses and the combined vertical resonance of the wheelset unsprung mass and the track (RailCorp, 2012).
The Railcorp Track manual also states that Rail corrugations are very dangerous since they increase the dynamic wheel loads and vibration, which subsequently exacerbates track deterioration. The manual also concedes that; it is still uncertain as to why in a particular track section may suffer different corrugation pitches (RailCorp, 2012). The manual suggests that this could be due to the different:
Traffic types and speed Suspension characteristics Rail support conditions Braking and acceleration Grades and traction Track geometry
Figure 3.6: Plastic flow associated with long pitch corrugation
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According Grassie and Kalousek in their review of rail corrugation conducted, corrugation is more much severe in non-ballasted tracks, as opposed to ballasted tracks. This is because ballasted track provides a combination of resilience and damping which alleviate unnecessary resonances and reduces the effect of those that do exist (Grassie & Kalousek, 1993).
In their widely cited review, they proposed that the rail corrugation phenomenon could be classified by various ‘wavelength-fixing’ and ‘damage’ mechanisms (Grassie & Kalousek, 1993). The table below depicts the Six types of rail corrugation identified by Grassie and Kalousek:
Table 3.2: Types of corrugation and their characteristics
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3.4.2 Rolling contact fatigue defects
According to Ralcorp Track manual, other major defects appear in a form of Rolling contact fatigue (RCF), which develops in most Railway Systems, across the world. RCF is a broad term which describes a range of defects that emanates from excessive shear stresses at the rail & wheel contact interface (RailCorp, 2012). The Railcorp goes further to clarify that the it is in the gauge corner region of the rails where the most severe RCF defects occur. Below are the various categories of RCF:
Shelling: shelling is a phenomenon used to describe internal defects that develops below the gauge corner of a rail. Shelling cracks are generally 2-8 mm deep, they develop on a longitudinal plane in following the rail shape (RailCorp, 2012).
Figure 3.7 (a): shell cracks
Gauge corner checking: these are cracks that mainly occur in sharper curves, and often observed on high rails. They develop close to the rail surface and gradually spread across the rail head.
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Figure 3.7 (b): gauge corner checking cracks
Flacking: flacking (also known as running surface checking) appears as snakeskin patterns that later grows into 10-15 mm wide and up to 3mm deep spalls of cracks on the running surface of the rail.
Figure 3.7 (c): Earlier stages of flacking defects
The manual also clarifies that these defects are a subject of the strength of rail material, they result from high shear stresses which normally develops at the wheel/rail interface as a results of the applied stress exceeding the permissible limits for the particular rail material (RailCorp, 2012).
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3.4.3 Squat defects
Another common rail failure is that of subsurface laminations, they develop as small cracks on the rail surface, extend downward in a diagonal pattern for approximately 6 mm under the surface, then spread longitudinally and laterally along and across the rail surface (RailCorp, 2012).
Squats may attack a rail on both the running surface squats and at the gauge corner regions. They have been observed in all rail types and in any track section, except for the sections under the bridge.
Figure 3.8: Large squat on the Running surface of a rail
3.4.4 Other Rail failures
There are lots of rail failures which are well recorded in the railway engineering body of knowledge. The Ralcorp Track manual also reported the following rail failures:
Shatter Cracking: these are internal defects which result from the presence of excessive levels of hydrogen in the rail steel. They normally develop at the centre region of the rail head (RailCorp, 2012).
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Split head: Head split is a very common and dangerous failure observed in rails. The head of a rail may split either vertically or horizontally, depending on the cause of the split.
Wheel or Engine burns: This type of failure is caused by resultant high temperature around the rail surface as a result of the locomotive wheels’ continuous slipping (RailCorp, 2012).
Rail head failures: various failures may occur particularly on the rail head. These include; o Local battering o Flacking o Long groove Failures on Rail web: the rail web is also not immune to failures, the following failures may occur on the rail web; o Horizontal crack at the web-head fillet radius o Horizontal crack at the web-foot filet radius o Vertical split of the web o Bolt hole fatigue within fishplate limits o Diagonal cracking at the holes outside fishplate limits o Diagonal cracking not passing through a hole o Lap o Excessive web corrosion
Rail foot failures: the foot of the rail may suffer either vertical or transverse cracks. Transverse cracks may develop either from the rail sit region or on the rail foot but away from the rail seat.
Failure due to Rail damage: faulty use of tools during installation or maintenance, derailments, damaged wheels, etc. may cause rail manages or bruises which may subsequently cause cracks and fractures on the rail.
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Weld failure: there are specific risks of failures associated with each type of rail welding used by any particular rail operator. o The rail may crack transversely or horizontally when using aluminothermic welding. o Transverse racks or break in flash-butt welded joint o Wire feed weld failure o Crack starting from arc strikes
In his Masters’ thesis, published by the Stellenbosch University (South Africa), Yakubu Jidayi summarised that rail failure can only be categorised as either a broken rail or a defective rail that is still in service; Broken rail: he described a broken rail to be a rail with complete breakage or a rail with a missing part. Defective rail: a defective rail is a rail that possesses any sort of defect (Jidayi, 2015).
A high degree of similarity can be drawn from Yakubu’s summary, Ralcorp’s manual and the International Union of Railway’s code which categorises rail failure into three groups; Broken rail: Damaged rail Cracked rail
3.5 Chapter Summary
This section of the study discussed the intrinsic failures of specific Perway components. It creates a link between the introduced Perway components (the latter part of Chapter 2), their inherent failures and the resultant last of reliability. It will however be explained in the next chapter that lack of reliability is not only due to components failures, but a variety of factors.
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CHAPTER FOUR
4 RELIABILITY ENGINEERING
4.1 Introduction The previous two chapters introduced Perway and its components, and discussed their inherent failures. This chapter introduces Reliability Engineering theory, with an aim of creating a link between Track failures and Track reliability.
4.2 Defining Reliability Reliability is an aspect of engineering uncertainty which seeks to measure product or system performance. Simply, reliability is a broader term that focuses on the ability and probability of a system or product to perform it’s intended function. By definition, reliability is a probability that a product/system will perform a required function without failure for a specific period of time, under specific conditions (O'Connor, 2010). A distinction is made between reliability of repairable items and reliability of non-repairable items:
4.2.1 Reliability of non-repairable systems
Only one failure may occur in a non-repairable system. A system in this instance may comprise of several individual items; failure to any individual part thus leads to failure of the entire system. Reliability of non-repairable systems is specified as mean time to failure (MTTF). In other words, the reliability of a non-repairable system is a function of the time to the first part failure (O'Connor, 2010). A typical example of non-repairable system is a light bulb; one failure is equal to the life time of a light bulb.
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4.2.2 Reliability of Repairable systems
More than one failure can occur in a repairable system. The reliability of a repairable system thus, is the probability that failure will not occur during a particular time period. Reliability of repairable system is expressed as the rate of occurrence of failures (ROCOF) or simply as failure rate.
To be noted is the fact that a repairable system can be composed of non- repairable parts; when failure occurs, the non-repairable parts of the system must rather be replaced in order to repair the system back to its functionality state. The time during which the repair exercise is being conducted is called down time, and it largely affects the availability of the system. Availability is the percentage of time when the system is operational or in a state where it’s able to perform its intended functions (Pecht, 1995). To increase availability of the system, the failure rate or the rate of occurrence of failures must be reduced and/or the maintainability of the system must be increased. The relationship between availability, reliability and maintainability is best captured by the formula below:
푀푇퐵퐹 Availability = 푀푇퐵퐹 + 푀푇푇푅
Where MTBF is the mean time between failures which is a measure of reliability under constant failure rate and MTTF is the mean time to repair. Improving either the MTBF or MTTR will result in availability improvements.
It is worth noting that the Railway Track falls under the category of repairable systems and availability is a very important aspect in the railway industry. Railway passengers suffers severe inconvenience whenever the train is late or delayed, in the same instance railways operators as well as the railway fraternity at large suffers reputational damage whenever passengers are inconvenienced.
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Whilst not every delay or cancellation is caused by infrastructure failure, Railway Infrastructure maintenance is a serious contributor to route unavailability. Maintenance can either be preventative or corrective (repair), either way, it renders the track unavailable and it is desirable that maintenance be conducted in the shortest period of time to increase system availability.
It is equally desirable that the rate of occurrence of failures be reduced to increase system availability. All these interventions can be achieved through reliability engineering.
4.3 Reliability Engineering Reliability engineering is a systematic application of engineering principles and techniques throughout the system/product lifecycle. Noting that all failures cannot be realistically eliminated from a design, O'Connor summarises the main objectives of reliability engineering in the following order of priority: Prevention of failuers Reduction of the likelihood or failures frequency Identification and correction of the causes of failures Determination of ways to cope with failure once it occurred Reliability estimation for new designs
Reliability Engineering should be an on-going process commencing at the product design or conceptual phase, continuing throughout all stages of a product’s life cycle. Whilst 'it may never be too late to improve the reliability of a product’, it is however less costly to identify and resolve potential factors undermining the reliability of the product/system as early as possible in the life of such product or system (O'Connor, 2010).
4.4 Reliability and Failure Failure is easily defined as inability of a system to perform a required function. Whilst it’s well understood that there is a certain level of uncertainty towards the causes of failure, during design, development, construction and service
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phases of a system, reliability engineering efforts should address all the anticipated and unanticipated causes of failure in order to alleviate their occurrence (O'Connor, 2010). There are various reasons why engineering items would fail.
Simoes’ dissertation on RAMS analysis of railway track infrastructure discussed the relationship between reliability, failure rate, MTTF and MTBF. Failure rate, which is denoted by the Greek letter λ, is the frequency with which an engineered system or component fails (Simoes, 2008).
It is generally accepted that products begin their life with a higher failure rate, which decreases with time as the product/system is being utilized. This period of high failure rate is known as the Early Failure Period or the Infant Mortality Period. The failure rate shall stabilize to a constant failure rate for (normally) the majority of the product/system’s useful life. The prolonged period of constant rate of failure is referred to as the Intrinsic Failure Period (Tobias & Trindade, 2012). If the system remains in use long enough, the rate of failure shall begin to rise due to materials wear out and degradation failures. The latter phase is referred to as the Wear Out Failure Period (Tobias & Trindade, 2012). The bathtub curve below, demonstrate the relationship between failure rate and the stages of the system/product life:
Figure 4.1: Failure rate Bathtub curve (Source: www.itl.nist.gov)
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According to Simoes, reliability, failure rate, MTTF and MTBF are interrelated and as such some of the parameters can be inferred from knowledge about other (Simoes, 2008).
4.5 Reliability deficiency in Permanent way Infrastructure According to product reliability, maintainability and supportability handbook, reliability is a critical attribute in determining product effectiveness, it is thus a barometer for system’s ability to avoid failure (Pecht, 2009). The hand book goes further to provide the figure below, which depicts the link between system/product effectiveness and reliability:
Figure 4.2: Major components of product effectiveness
Thus an unreliable Perway infrastructure (Track) is characterised by: high rate of occurrence of failures (ROCOF) longer lead times for repairs, after failure has occurred (MTTR) unavailable for trains to pass when required
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4.6 Chapter Summary This section discussed the theory behind reliability engineering. It attempts to create a link between Track Failures and Reliability Engineering. The chapter leads the study into the first objective of the dissertation, which is to review the existing theory on factors that undermines the reliability of railway track.
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CHAPTER FIVE
5 LITERATURE REVIEW
5.1 Introduction Besides providing all the background about the Permanent way infrastructure and the basic reliability engineering concepts, it is necessary to review the literature directly linked to this topic. This chapter discusses the factors that undermine the reliability of railway track. It begins by discussing the factors which the researcher had identified through reading previously published papers and related material. These are the factors that forms the foundation of this study. The chapter shall proceed to discuss factors that were established through structured interviews that were conducted with industry experts who attended the 2017 International Heavy Haul Association conference, hosted in Capetown, South Africa.
5.2 Factors Identified through Literature Review In his reliability improvement study, Yakubu Jidayi outlined some sources of railway track unreliability to be; poor design of components and systems, Manufacturing defects and inherent flaws, Poor maintenance policies, strategies and implementations, Organisational rigidity and complexity, Human error and Lack of critical skilled personnel (Jidayi, 2015). Various schoolers also made reference to these factors, which their argument is covered in the detail below.
5.2.1 Poor design of components and systems As discussed in Chapter Two (South Africa’s Perway Infrastructure), the railway track is comprised of various sub-systems and components. Any lack of reliability on either of these components and subsystems could compromise the reliability of the entire Railway Track. The poor design of components and system was also identified as a major cause of reliability
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deficiency by E. Balagurusamy, an Indian educator, engineer and author. In his 1984 Reliability Engineering book (recently published its 10th reprint in 2010),
Balagurusamy stated that “poor design and incorrect manufacturing techniques are obvious reasons of the low reliability”. The author argued that manufactures of components and systems are worry of their budgets and cost of sales such that, they become hesitant to invest in improved designs and modern manufacturing techniques and technologies (Balagurusamy, 1984).
Balagurusamy’s argument was totally agreed to by K.K Aggarwal in his 1993 Reliability Engineering book. Aggarwal also warns us against sophistication of systems, as part of poor design, he stated that; sophisticated systems are costly, they comprise of more components which is a risk to their own reliability and could be user unfriendly, thus increase more chances of human errors. He goes further and advises that systems should be kept as simple as they are compatible with the performance requirements (Aggarwal, 1993).
5.2.2 Manufacturing defects and inherent flaws In most instances, the railway operators would have a huge influence in the design of Track components, through their responsibility to develop products specifications. The railway operators are however less involved with the manufacturing of the components.
The design process happens long before the manufacturing phase. If the involved parties fail to detect any flaw in a product’s design, such designs shall lead to a production of products with inherent defects. Design defects are not so easy to correct and could be very costly.
A manufacturing defect occurs when a product is being made or assembled. The two most common causes of manufacturing defects are poor-quality materials and human errors. A manufacturing defect can
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easily be resolved by replacing the defective products and addressing the source.
All components of the Railway Track have an expected life time, under specific working conditions. And that character would have been used to calculate the reliability of the entire system, thus a compromise to the individual components either through design or during manufacturing, shall compromise the reliability of the entire Track.
5.2.3 Poor maintenance policies, strategies and implementations Balagurusamy agrees to Poor maintenance policies, strategies and implementations qua a major factor to the deficiency of reliability. He argued that the most important period of a system is its operating period, as such, if the organisation adopt the most progressive maintenance policies and strategies, such system’s production period can actually be extended beyond the expected life cycle, thus increasing the reliability of a system. Meaning that, if the organisation adopts poor maintenance policies and strategies, they might be at a risk of reducing the reliability of that particular system (Balagurusamy, 1984).
These statements are also supported by Leon Zaayman, who argues that Track design and construction should be less than 30% of the life cycle cost of the Railway Track, whilst 70% or more of the life cycle cost shall be spent on maintenance. Zaayman goes further to elaborate the importance of this factor in stating that for a railway system to be considered efficient and effective, it’s infrastructure must be reliable, available, maintainable, affordable and safe (a notion denoted as RAMAS). He believes that RAMAS can only be achieved by implementing an effective track maintenance strategy. This is a strategy based on the entire track infrastructure, track life and the entire life cycle cost of the infrastructure (Zaayman, 2016).
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As per the figure below, developed by Arjen Zoeteman of the Delft University of Technology in their analysis of life cycle cost for managing rail infrastructure, it was established that not only does Maintenance strategy affect the reliability of the infrastructure but it also affects the cost of ownership and planned availability of the infrastructure (Zoeteman, 2001).
Figure 5.1: Factors influencing the performance of rail infrastructure
A pioneering technology leader that works closely with utility, industry, transport and infrastructure customers in roughly 100 countries, ABB listed and briefly discussed four basic types of maintenance philosophies;
Corrective maintenance, which is only carried out following a detection of an anomaly in the system and aimed at restoring the
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system back to its normal operating conditions. This approach could be very detrimental to the infrastructure or any other system due to the downtime, cost uncertainty and lack of planning.
Preventive maintenance: Preventive maintenance is aimed at reducing the risk of failure or performance degradation of the system is normally carried out at predetermined intervals or according to prescribed criteria (ABB, 2017). Maintenance is thus planned and executed in accordance with the need for maintenance and may render the system unavailable for a longer time. The failure rate is in most instances, reduced.
Risk-based maintenance: This form of maintenance is based on periodic measurements and tests. The gathered information is analysed taking into consideration the environment, operation and functional condition of the system with an aim of defining the appropriate maintenance program (ABB, 2017). As a result, components of that particular system that are found noncompliant are then replaced or refurbished. This form of maintenance is known to prolong the useful life, guarantee high levels of reliability over time, maximise safety and efficiency of that particular system (ABB, 2017).
Condition-based maintenance: This maintenance strategy is mainly based on constant monitoring of the equipment performance and the resultant corrective actions (ABB, 2017). Condition-based maintenance is known for drastically reducing maintenance costs in a long term, thus reduding the rate and frequency of failure (ABB, 2017).
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They further provided a graph representing the relationship between reliability, performance, maintenance and time:
Figure 5.2: Maintenance Strategy (Source: ABB.com)
5.2.4 Organisational rigidity and complexity According to an MBA graduate, Mr. Jeremy Bradley who works in the fields of educational consultancy and business administration, organizational flexibility and organizational rigidity are common themes in strategic management. In his article, Jeremy identifies flexibility and rigidity as two common methods which describes how managers develop organizational strategies. He further warns that irrespective of the employed method, barriers are almost inevitable, hence it is advised that managers should approaching strategic management holistically. He describes organizational flexibility as being amenable to adapting a company's strategies to suit varying internal and external factors that can affect its day-to-day operations whereas organizational rigidity is a management approach that is the exact opposite of flexibility. He warns that rigidity can sometimes work to the detriment of a business when managers refuse to make necessary changes (Bradley, 2017).
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Balagurusamy agrees with Jeremy’s views and also consent to organizational rigidity being a threat to reliability. He argues that, in some organizations, rigidity of rules and procedures prohibits the creative- thinking and design. He substantiated his argument by the fact that reliability is a concern of almost all departments of an organization and as such, sufficient opportunity should be made available for all concerned personnel and management to discuss the causes of failures (Balagurusamy, 1984). The risk of organizational rigidity may be quite high in the South African Railway sector considering that most of the railway infrastructure is owned by the state and as such managed through state-owned enterprises, which are characterised by bureaucracy, red tapes and longer lead-times.
5.2.5 Lack of critical skilled personnel “All failures have a cause and the lack of understanding these causes is the primary cause of the unreliability of a given system” (Aggarwal, 1993). The aforementioned argument was made by K.K Aggarwal in relation to system failures and the reliability of the system. He agrees that lack of understanding which in most instances could be attributed to lack of skills, qualifications and experience; is a major cause to system unreliability.
Railway is a very specialised industry, it requires special skills in management as well as engineering. Over and above the well recorded skills shortage in the country, Railway industry also suffers from the lack of academic support; there is no sufficient railway-specific courses offered by the existing universities and colleges in the country. All these lead to a situation where graduates who are generally qualified in certain disciplines are employed with the hope that they will get specific training on the job.
The South African Department of Higher Education and Training issued a gazette in January 2016 to update the List of Occupations in High
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Demand which was originally published in 2014. According to the gazette, South Africa has three main symptoms; mismatches between qualifications and occupations, high unemployment and skills shortages (Department of Higher Education and Training, 2016). The shortage of skills in the country is a very complicate problem which feeds from the previous political exclusion and oppression of the majority citizens. Even post democracy, the problem remains as huge due to the commodification of education which leaves the majority unable to afford quality higher education. The railway industry continues to lose experienced individuals into retirement which further erodes the sources of information and skills. According to a report issued by the South African Department of Labour, the Government recognised the pertinent issue of skills shortage and its consequences and undertakes to improve the infrastructure in schools and higher education institutions in order to create a conducive environment for teaching and learning (Department of Labour, 2014). The Department of Labour is also committed to address the issue of skills shortages in the labour market through various programmes.
5.2.6 Human error By definition, Human Error is simply some human output which is outside the tolerances established by the system requirements in which the person operates (Aggarwal, 1993). Even though the rest of the world seems to be progressing towards automation, in South Africa there is a need to utilize the available labor force as such, the Railway operators in the country have to strike a balance between automation/mechanization and the use of human resources.
In one of his first major poems, Alexander Pope provided the definite truth; To err is human, meaning that human beings will always commit errors from time to time.
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According to K.K Aggarwal, the contribution of Human error to the unreliability may be at various stages of the life cycle of such product or system. He provided seven potential courses which human error may be attributed to: physical inability, lack of understanding of the equipment, tool or process, carelessness, forgetfulness, poor judgemental skills, lack of proper operating procedures or instructions, (Aggarwal, 1993).
Aggarwal acknowledges that human errors may never be completely eliminated however, through proper selection and training of human resources, standardisation of procedures, simplification of control schemes and other incentive measures, human errors may be drastically minimized, thus improve the overall reliability of the system (Aggarwal, 1993).
During his time at the University of Ottawa, Dr D.S Dhillon wrote a book about Human Reliability, Error, and Human Factors in Power Generation Industry. In his book, he outlined the relationship between Human errors and their impact on the reliability of the system. The book also endorses the ATHEANA methodology which attempts to calculate the probability of human failure event occurring, by applying the following formula (Dhillon, 2014):
푃ℎ푓푒 = 푃푒푓푒푃푢푠푎푃푛푝
Where
푃ℎ푓푒 represents the probability of human failure event occurrence
푃푒푓푒 represents the probability of error-forcing context
푃푢푠푎 represents the probability of unsafe action in the error-forcing context
푃푛푝 represents the probability of non recovery in the error-forcing context and given the occurrence of the unsafe action as well as the existence of additional evidence following the unsafe action.
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Human Errors in the railway sector could be more costly, given the nature of the railway business and its interaction with the civilians. According to a ‘Railway Accidents and Human Error’ study that was conducted describe railway accidents which involved human error occurred between 1945 and 2012 in the United Kingdom, the railway safety in UK has improved greatly with the influence of technological advancements, thus reducing the number of accidents however, it was still concluded that the number of human errors found in each accident remains more or less the same (Kam, 2013).
In South Africa there has been a series of Railway accidents that were blamed on Human errors. A preliminary investigation by the Rail Safety Regulator into a train collision accident in Elandsfontein where two trains collided, indicated that the train control officer authorised two trains to proceed onto the same section of the track at the same time. It further indicated that the train control personnel on duty failed to observe the abnormal situation1.
There is a huge need to study this area in a south African perspective.
5.3 Factors identified during Interviews with Industry experts 5.3.1 Insufficient funding The African Development Bank conducted a study on Financing Policy Options for Rail Infrastructure in Africa. In their report, the group acknowledges the economic recovery shared by most African countries and the growth projections driven by a fast- growing demographic and a largescale urbanization. They further acknowledged the important role to be played by the transport sector in accelerating and intensifying trade in Africa. In comparison to other means of transportation, the Rail transport is expected to play a pivotal role in contributing to the aforementioned
1 In June 2017, two Trains collided in Elandsfontein on Gauteng's East Rand, killing one and injuring 102 passengers. The matter was later reported as a result of signalling cable theft
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economic growth, however, the appalling state of the railway infrastructure and rolling stock in many African countries undermines the potential of the rail systems to play a strong contributing role in economic development (African Development Bank , 2015). The African Development Bank’s report identifies that rail transport market share in most countries on the continent is below 20% of the total volume of freight transport. Two major reasons for that low market share are; lack of investment in infrastructure and the absence of a supporting institutional framework (African Development Bank , 2015). In South Africa, the 2015 National Rail Policy green paper, recalls the De Villiers report of 19862 which arguably contributed to the downfall of railway competitiveness. The DE Villiers report recommended that SATS should restrain from investing in the railway sector and rather focus on increasing the utilization of existent assets. The recommendation was premised on the fact that the railway sector was running at a loss and unable to compete with other modes of transport. According to the green paper, recommending an increased utilization of inherently uncompetitive assets was a compromised move, the move was at the impediment of long distance passenger services and general freight. The green paper warns against moving rail-friendly commodities from road to rail without a concomitant investment towards railway renaissance in South Africa (Department of Transport, 2015). Having mentioned all the negative impacts of lack of funding or investment into the infrastructure, it must be noted though that the country has been making quite positive strides to improve their railway infrastructure. These would range from the development of Gautrain3 to Transnet’s MDS which is meant to create more capacity in anticipation of high demand.
2 The study by Dr W.J. de Villiers regarding the strategic planning, management practices and systems of the South African Transport Services was published in July 1986. It was accepted in its entirety by Parliament, except for the recommendations that (i) the Minister of Transport Affairs should serve as chairman of the Control Board and (iv) that the Transport Services be exempted from company tax. 3 In 2010, South Africa launched their first high speed Train, called Gautrain which developed as a public private partnership in terms of a concession agreement between the Gauteng Provincial Government and the Bombela Concession Company.
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Following the country’s National Development Plan, the country envisages several interventions including railway infrastructure expansion and other investments which will ensure that by 2030, railway and other transport modes will be able to serve as key driver in empowering South Africa and its people.
5.3.2 Aging rail network As per the history of railways in South Africa, provided in Chapter two, most of the South Africa’s main rail routes were constructed prior 1900, the branch lines were mostly constructed prior 1910. The green paper blames obsolete standards and technologies that have run their course, and the subsequent failure to invest in the current generation of technologies, as the main reason for underutilised railway infrastructure (Department of Environmental Affairs, 2015). An old rail network characterised by underinvestment is intrinsically unreliable and dangerous to the community. Such a network is also characterised by high cost of ownership due to the inherent chronic failures. According to the general failure curve below, a system shall experience an increased failure rate during its worn-out stages (stage that commences after T2).
Figure 5.3: General failure curve (Source: venividiwiki)
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Elsayed argued that the rapid increase in the failure rate is no longer due to random failures but the age of the system. He further recommends that such can be managed through implementation of preventative maintenance or replacement of components (Elsayed, 2012).
5.3.3 Poor rail/wheel interaction management The international Heavy Haul Association (IHHA) and its Board of Directors commissioned guidelines to best practices for heavy haul railway operations which deals specifically with management of the wheel and rail interface. Inference is drawn from newton’s third law that when a wheel exerts a force on the rail, the rail simultaneously exerts a force of equal magnitude on the wheel and vice versa. “What is good for the railway wheel is good for the rail and vice versa” (IHHA, 2015). Rail/wheel interaction presents a very intimate metal to metal relationship characterised by potential wear, fatigue, forces, surface shear, high and low temperature and contamination from water, lubricants, snow, leaves, etc. If this relationship is not well managed or balanced serious consequences may be experienced ranging from minor failures to derailments, which in turn could have dire implication on the rail network’s reliability.
5.3.4 Excess Loads
Figure 5.4: Overloaded passenger trains (Source: youtube.com)
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According to an article published in the Business Line, Excess loads damage the rail tracks and wheels, thus reducing the life cycle of the Track and wheels due to faster wear and tear. Apart from higher maintenance costs, this factor is even more dangerous for Rail network shared by both freight and passenger trains, since damaged rails could even result in accidents if not detected on time (Das, 2008).
The published proceedings of the third international symposium on Life- Cycle and Sustainability of Civil Infrastructure Systems, hosted Vienna, Australia in 2012 indicates that, deterioration due to corrosion and repeated overloading are the major factors when dealing with the reliability of infrastructure systems (Strauss, et al., 2012).
5.4 Chapter Summary This section represents the major part of the research designed. The chapter starts by discussing the factors that undermine the reliability of railway track. These are factors which the researcher was able to identify from the available literature. Post the one-one-one interviews which the researcher conducted with industry experts, the researcher was made abreast of other major factors which should have been part of his project, leading the researcher back to conduct literature review based on recommendations by the industry experts. Post to this literature review, the paper shall reveal the general views of engineers, technicians, managers and directors who are working closely with the Railway Track.
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6 RESEARCH APPROACH 6.1 Introduction
This chapter outlines the research approach. According to Professor John Creswell of the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, research approaches are plans and procedures for research that span the steps from broad assumptions to detailed methods of data collection, analysis, and interpretation. Creswell further guides that research approaches, research designs, and research methods are three key terms that represent a perspective about research that presents information in a successive way from broad constructions of research to the narrow procedures of methods (Creswell, 2014).
In this chapter, the researcher shall reveal the reasoning behind the chosen research design, method of data collection, analysis, and interpretation. The figure below outlines the process followed:
Literature Review Structured Interviews • Study the literature on • Conduct structure interviews factors undermining the with industry experts reliability of railway • Open-ended question track • New factors were established
Literature Review On-line Survey • Study the literature on • Conduct a Survey to consolidate and additional factors generalise the views of those working established during the with Railway Track. interviews • Close-ended questions
Data Analysis • Analyse the data received through the conducted online survey
Figure 6.1: Overview of the process followed (developed by the author)
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6.2 Research Paradigm
The reality is that there are Railway operations in South Africa, these operations are made possible by the Railway Track, amongst other components. What we already know is that, Railway Track is not immune to failures and reliability deterioration. Previous studies have indicated some of the factors that may be of influence to the loss of reliability in the Railway track. What is not known is; which of those factors are the most prevalent in South Africa, taking into consideration that the realities, environment, culture, etc. of different countries and areas are diverse.
Ontologically, the researcher assumed that there is no single truth or reality, rather reality is constantly debated and negotiated and it takes into account the environment and situations.
Epistemologically, the researcher was of the view that reality can be measured, as such it is important to use reliable tools. However, there should be no limit as to which reliable tools must be used to measure reality; the best tool/method is the one that solves the problem.
Following all of the above, the researcher chose to use the pragmatism research paradigm, as opposed to either Positivism or Constructivism. According to John Creswell, there are many forms of pragmatism philosophy, but for many, pragmatism as a research paradigm arises out of actions, situations, and consequences rather than antecedent conditions (as in post- positivism). Instead of focusing on research methods, pragmatic researchers focus more on the research problem and employ any research approach available in order to understand the problem (Creswell, 2014).
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He further summarised the four research paradigms as follows:
Table 6.1: Four main research paradigms (Creswell, 2014)
Various writers do endorse Pragmatism as a progressive research paradigm. Pragmatism allows the Individual researchers liberty to choose the methods, techniques, and procedures of research which are more suitable for their research projects. This is due to the fact that Pragmatic researched are to tied to one specific system of philosophy and reality. In a similar way, mixed methods researchers employ various research approaches in collecting and analysing data as opposed to subscribing to either qualitative or quantitative research approach (Creswell, 2014).
6.3 Research Approach
Various writers have made inference to the three main research approached, namely; quantitative research, qualitative research, and mixed methods. An often committed error is to assume that these methods are mutually exclusive and can only be applied separately. According to Newman & Benz, Qualitative and quantitative approaches represent different ends on a continuum and should not be viewed as rigid, distinct categories, polar opposites, or dichotomies. He clarifies that, in this continuum, Mixed methods research is located at the middle since it incorporates elements of both qualitative and quantitative approaches (Newman & Benz, 1998).
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In this research study, the researcher adopted mixed methods by opting to utilize both the qualitative and quantitative approaches. Prior to a review of the application of the mixed methods, below is a brief discussion of each of these three research approaches:
Quantitative Research: This approach examines the relationship among variables for the purpose of testing objective theories. Quantitative research entails uncovering objectivity through collected data, in order to create meaning. The Quantitative research approach is also known for the structure of its report which normally consisting of introduction, literature review, methods, results, and discussion. The approach is also characterised by numeric or statistical approach designed to establish, confirm, or validate relationships as well as to develop generalizations that contribute to theory (Williams, 2007).
Qualitative Research: Creswell describes qualitative research as an approach for exploring and understanding the meaning individuals or groups ascribe to a social or human problem. He also described it as an unfolding model that occurs in a natural setting which makes it possible for researchers to develop a high level of detail based on their involvement in the actual experiences (Creswell, 2014). Qualitative research is also characterised by a flexible structure of the final written report. It is conducted within a poststructuralist paradigm and builds its premises on inductive, rather than deductive reasoning. According to Leedy and Ormrod, there are five areas of qualitative research, namely: o case study o ethnography study o phenomenological study o grounded theory study o content analysis.
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They argued that qualitative research builds from the observational elements that pose questions which the researcher then attempts to explain, and there is no beginning point of truth or any established assumptions from which the researcher can begin (Leedy & Jeanne , 2001).
Mixed Methods Research The chosen research approach for this study falls within the ambit of mixed research methods. This choice was premised on the fact that the quantitative and the qualitative research approaches are complementary to and compatible with each other.
The development of mixed research methods can only be traced until the latter half of the 20th century, accompanied by an increased interest in qualitative research. This research approach entails collecting both quantitative and qualitative data, integrating the two forms of data, and using distinct designs that may involve philosophical assumptions and theoretical frameworks. The mixed methods research approached is premised on the assumption that the combination of qualitative and quantitative approaches provides a more complete understanding of a research problem than either approach alone (Creswell, 2014).
In their study, aimed at positioning mixed methods research as a natural complement to traditional qualitative and quantitative research, Johnson & Onwuegbuzie argued that mixed methods approach to research is an extension of the traditional quantitative and qualitative approaches to research, rather than a replacement, for the latter two research approaches will continue to be useful and important. They believed that using the mixed methods approach to research helps researchers to optimize the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of the quantitative and qualitative research approaches. The pair also demonstrated a common understanding with Creswell in their assertion that mixed methods approach to research advocate
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doing „what works‟ within the precepts of research to investigate, to predict, to explore, to describe, to understand the phenomenon, hence this approach to is characterised by pragmatic assumptions which govern claims about what knowledge is (Johnson & Onwuegbuzie, 2004).
6.4 Research Design
Research design, also referred as strategy of inquiry, is simply the type of inquiry within the chosen research approach that gives specific direction for procedures followed to conduct the research. The strategy of enquiry helps integrate the different components of the study in a coherent and logical way, thus ensuring the researcher to effectively address the research problem.
In the fourth edition of his ‘Research Design’ book, Creswell groups alternative research designs for each of the three discussed research approaches;
Qualitative Quantitative Mixed Methods Narrative research Convergence Phenomenology Experimental designs Explanatory sequential Grounded theory Non experimental design Transformative, (e.g. surveys) Embedded or Multiphase Ethnographies Exploratory sequential Case study Table 6.2: Alternative research designs
Following the identification of this study falling within the pragmatic research paradigm, hence the choice to use mixed research methods, the researcher opted for an exploratory sequential design.
Exploratory sequential mixed methods is the one in which the researcher first conducts qualitative research, explores the views of participants, analyses the data and then uses the information to conduct a quantitative research.
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6.5 Research Method
Following the chosen Exploratory sequential design, a combination of the quantitative and qualitative methods was applied. This multiple methods of data collection and analysis strengthens reliability as well as internal validity. The advantages of triangulation were reported by Todd Jick in his “Triangulation in Action” book back in 1979 (and of course reproduced and cited by multiple writers to date).
In his book, Todd Jick affirms that triangulation can help capture the holistic, comprehensive and contextual portrayal of the subject being studied. He argued that, over and above the fact that triangulation allows for the researcher to analyse the overlapping variance, it may also uncover some unique variance which otherwise could have been neglected through the use of a single method. He further indicated that, triangulation may be used to examine the same phenomenon from multiple perspectives and more importantly, it allows for new or deeper dimensions to emerge (Jick, 2013).
Creswell provides the table below containing various research methods which may be applied depending on the chosen research design (Creswell, 2014):
Table 6.3: Research Methods
The basis of the research emanated from a literature review, where the researcher reviewed previous publications about factors that undermine the reliability of railway track.
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6.5.1 Qualitative research method
In conducting this study, the researcher attended the 2017 international heavy haul association (IHHA) conference held in Cape town, South Africa where he got an opportunity to conduct structured interviews with various Railway experts4. Although the interviews were structured, they contained open-ended questions without predetermined responses.
The conducted interviews allowed the railway experts to give input into the research study there by;
validating the relevance of the research problem confirming the need for the study examine the factors (affecting the reliability of railway track) identified through literature review provide other factors (affecting the reliability of railway track) based on their experience and knowledge preceded
6.5.2 Quantitative research method
Post the qualitative phase, the researcher consolidated the views of industry experts and those identified through the literature review, to build a quantitative research survey. Close-ended questions were used to structure a questionnaire which was then distributed to various individuals within the South African railway sector (mainly track-related engineers/managers).
The survey (questionnaire) was conducted through an online platform where respondents received emails with a link to the survey. The questionnaire was limited to individuals within South Africa. Invited were responses from individuals working for the passenger rail, freight rail and
4 In September 2017, the International Heavy Haul Association (IHHA) held their 11th conference in Cape Town, South Africa. The conference was attended by 934 delegates, from 242 different organizations and 28 countries. The conference was preceded by a technical track workshop featuring international and local railway technical experts who presented on selected topics within the Infrastructure and Rolling Stock fields.
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the high speed train. A total of 52 individuals completed the questionnaire and their profiles are as follows:
6.5.2.1 Qualifications: Majority of the respondents (55,77%) were in possession of a postgraduate qualification;
Figure 6.2: summary of the respondent’s’ qualifications
6.5.2.2 Level of Employment: most of the respondents are Engineers/Technologists/Specialists;
Figure 6.3: outline of respondent’s’ designations
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6.5.2.3 Experience: credibility of this study is much enhenced by the level of experience of the respondents. An overwhelming sum of 38% of the respondents have been in the Railway industry for more than 20 years;
Figure 6.4: Respondents’ years of experience within the railway sector
Based on their knowledge and experience within the Railway industry, these participants were requested to indicate their level of agreement or disagreement to each factor being a major contributor in undermining the reliability of railway track. The survey was limited to a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 represents “strongly disagree” and 5 represents “strongly agree”.
In conclusion, the research approach can be summarised by the figure below:
Research Rersearch Mixed methods Research methods paradigm Approach Research Design •Both predetermined and emerging methods •Postpositivist •Qualitative •Convergence •Both open- and closed- •Constructivist •Quantitative •Explanatory sequential ended questions •Transformative •Mixed methods •Pragmatic •Transformative, • Multiple forms of data Embedded or drawing on all possibilities Multiphase •Statistical and text analysis •Explaratory •Across databases sequential interpretation •Explaratory sequential
Figure 6.5: Summary of the research approach (Developed by the author)
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6.6 Chapter Summary
In this chapter, the researcher revealed the followed research and data collection methods, the research design, the applicable research approach and the ultimate philosophical world view/research paradigm. It was explained that this study falls under the pragmatic research paradigm, as such the researcher applied a mixture of Qualitative and Quantitative research approaches. The research design was of mixed methods which followed the exploratory sequential design, wherein the researcher started with the qualitative research method and ended with the quantitative research method. The chapter explained the triangulation of the research methods applied. The chapter also provided a brief introduction of the profiles of individuals who responded to the quantitative survey. The next chapter shall reveal the responses gathered from these individuals.
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7 RESEARCH FINDINGS
7.1 Introduction
The researcher has already introduced the background to Railway Infrastructure, typical Track failures, reliability engineering principles and the factors that undermine the reliability of railway track. In the previous chapter, the researcher discussed the research approach. The chapter shall present the research results/findings from both the preliminary work (qualitative research) and the subsequent quantitative survey conducted within the South African railway sector.
7.2 Qualitative Research
As already explained, open-ended questions were used to conduct structured interviews with industry experts. The industry experts were requested to examine the six factors outlined by Yakubu Jidayi as some sources of railway track unreliability, namely; poor design of components and systems, Manufacturing defects and inherent flaws, Poor maintenance policies, strategies and implementations, Organisational rigidity and complexity, Human error and Lack of critical skilled personnel. From this qualitative research exercise, the following results can be reported: Poor design: the interviewed industry experts were not agreeable to the poor design of components and systems factor. It was indicated that Track components used in South Africa are as good as those used in any other parts of the world. This position was also backed by the fact that some of items such as Rails and turnouts are currently being imported from some of the world leaders or developed countries.
Manufacturing defects and inherent flaws: this factor was also rejected on similar reasons as the above factor.
Poor maintenance policies, strategies and implementations: it was indicated that the maintenance policies and strategies are not a factor,
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but the implementation part. Implementation of maintenance strategies was identified as a huge factor due to various reasons including lack of funding.
Organisational rigidity and complexity: the industry experts were agreeable to this factor as a major cause to track unreliability.
Industry experts also agreed to Human error and Lack of critical skilled personnel as major factors to Track unreliability.
The industry experts were also used as sources to gather more factors that may exists to undermine the reliability of railway track. The following factors were established through this exercise; Insufficient funding, Aging rail network, poor rail/wheel interaction management and excess loads.
7.3 Quantitative Research
A quantitative survey comprising of close-ended questions was distributed to Railway personnel (profiles presented in chapter 6). Based on their knowledge and experience within the Railway industry, a total of 52 respondents rated each factor using a scale of 1 to 5, where 1 represents “strongly disagree” and 5 represents “strongly agree”. The results of the quantitative research can be summarised as follows: 7.3.1 Poor design of components and systems The general view of the participants disagreed with the notion that Poor design of components and systems is a major cause of Track reliability deficiency:
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Figure 7.1: Poor design of components and systems
7.3.2 Manufacturing defects and inherent flaws A very narrow margin (3.84%) exists between those who agreed and those who disagreed that Manufacturing defects and inherent flaws are the major causes of Track reliability deficiency.
Figure 7.2: Manufacturing defects and inherent flaws
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7.3.3 Poor maintenance policies, strategies and implementations This factor received an overwhelming confirmation from the respondents whereby 51.92% strongly agreed that Poor maintenance policies, strategies and implementations are the major cause of Track reliability deficiency:
Figure 7.3: Poor maintenance policies, strategies and implementations
7.3.4 Organisational rigidity and complexity
The general view of the respondents is that they agreed with the notion that Organizational rigidity and complexity is a major cause of Track reliability deficiency:
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Figure 7.4: Organizational rigidity and complexity
7.3.5 Human errors Respondents also agreed that Human errors are a major cause of Track reliability deficiency:
Figure 7.5: Human errors
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7.3.6 Lack of critical skilled personnel The majority of respondents also agreed that there is a lack of Railway- related critical skills in the country and this was rated as one of the main causes of Track reliability deficiency:
Figure 7.6: Lack of critical skills in the country
7.3.7 Aging rail network The majority of respondents strongly agreed that the South African Railway track has aged without concomitant maintenance, as such aging rail network was identified as a major cause of Track reliability deficiency:
Figure 7.7: Aging rail network
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7.3.8 Insufficient funding An overwhelming majority of respondents strongly agreed that insufficient funding is the major cause of Track reliability deficiency:
Figure 7.8: Insufficient funding
7.3.9 Excess loads The general view of respondents indicates that overloading of railway wagons or trains is a major cause of Track reliability deficiency:
Figure 7.9: Excess loads
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7.3.10 Poor rail/wheel interaction management Respondents also agreed that poor management of rail/wheel interaction is a major cause of Track reliability deficiency:
Figure 7.10: Poor management of rail/wheel interaction
7.4 Classification of Factors
Using a weighted of 1-5, were 1 represents strongly disagree and 5 represents strongly agree, a weighted score was derived for all the factors measured. The figure below depicts the weighted score per each factor:
Unreliability Factors
POOR RAIL/WHEEL INTERACTION MANAGEMENT 199 EXCESS LOADS. 174 INSUFFICIENT FUNDING 215 AGING RAIL NETWORK 212 LACK OF CRITICAL SKILLED PERSONNEL 175 HUMAN ERROR 191 ORGANISATIONAL RIGIDITY AND COMPLEXITY 171 POOR MAINTENANCE POLICIES, STRATEGIES AND … 217 MANUFACTURING DEFECTS AND INHERENT FLAWS 152 POOR DESIGN OF COMPONENTS AND SYSTEMS 150
0 50 100 150 200 250
Figure 7.11: Summary of the results finding
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Following the Pareto Analysis, it can be deduced that only three factors are of major impact and could be the main reasons for the demise of Track reliability in South Africa. following the 80/20 rule, these factors are;
Poor maintenance policies, strategies and implementations; Insufficient funding; Aging rail network
Below is a depiction of the pareto diagram developed from the results of the quantitative survey:
Figure 7.12: A pareto diagram of the research results
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Figure 7.12: A pareto diagram of the research results
7.5 Chapter Summary
This chapter presented results that were attained through both the structure interviews (qualitative research) and the online research survey (quantitative research). Following the exploratory mixed research methods; the results attained from the qualitative research was used to build the quantitative research survey. This chapter indicates lucidly the results of the quantitative survey conducted within the railway industry in South Africa.
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8 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION
Railway transportation remains a very key economic enabler for South Africa. The country is undergoing massive development in various sectors, including railway infrastructure. It is of paramount importance to ensure that the reliability of the railway infrastructure remains intact and is continuously improved, to enhance railway competitiveness. This study provides a focused view of factors that are of major impact to the reliability of railway track; this will allow railway organisations to narrow their focus and channel efforts into resolving factors that will yield optimum results.
Quelling the lack of reliability and thus improving the reliability of railway track shall positively influence the competitiveness of railway transportation and subsequently reduce the cost of doing business in South Africa, thus improving the lives of South African citizens.
8.1 Conclusions
Ten (10) factors were found to be significant for explaining railway track deficiency in South Africa. Based on the Pareto analysis, Poor maintenance policies, strategies and implementations, Insufficient funding and the aging rail network are the three major factors responsible for 80% of Track reliability deficiency, in South Africa. It was also concluded that;
Track components used in South Africa are as good as those used by other leading railway countries. Overloading of trains is well managed and is of minimal impact to the reliability of railway track The railway organisations in the country are well managed, by properly skilled and qualified professionals Even though railway is losing skilled people through retirement and other reasons, the railway organizations in the country seems to be compensating for such through various training and skills development programs
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8.2 Recommendations
Following the research findings, the following recommendations can be made;
The railway organisations in the country should priorities the replacement of old infrastructure through capital expenditure. Adequate funding should be made available for railway construction, maintenance and rehabilitation projects As part of continuous improvements, railway organisations should realign/refocus and modernise their maintenance strategies and implementations
8.3 Future work
In line with the objective of this study, the thesis only compared the influence of various factors undermining the reliability of railway track, it does not go as further as finding solutions to quell or eradicate those factors. Future work is required to deal with the root causes of these factors as well as to find solutions to eradicate these factors for the reliability of railway track.
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APPENDIXES
1. Structured Interview Questionnaire 2. Online Survey Questionnaire 3. Online Survey respondents profiles 4. Online Survey results
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