School of Electronic, Electrical and System Engineering University of Birmingham Whole System Railway Modelling A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Author: Garry Patrick Greenland Supervisor(s): Professor Clive Roberts and Dr. Stuart Hillmansen Date: 16th April 2019 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is under a Creative Commons Attribution- NoDerivatives 4.0 International (CC BY-ND 4.0) licence. You are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format for any purpose, even commercially. The licensor cannot revoke these freedoms as long as you follow the license terms. Under the following terms: Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use. NoDerivatives — If you remix, transform, or build upon the material, you may not distribute the modified material. No additional restrictions — You may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits. Notices: You do not have to comply with the license for elements of the material in the public domain or where your use is permitted by an applicable exception or limitation. No warranties are given. The license may not give you all of the permissions necessary for your intended use. For example, other rights such as publicity, privacy, or moral rights may limit how you use the material. Whole System Railway Modelling Preliminaries Garry Patrick Greenland Abstract There has been a general view articulated within the railway industry that there needs to be greater systems thinking and systems engineering applied to major projects within the industry (Network Rail, 2013 and Rail Safety and Standards Board, 2012). However, there are many differing ideas held by practicing engineers of exactly what systems engineering is and how it is applied within the industry. There are also barriers within industry in general, management and practicing engineers to using systems engineering techniques. They can be seen as an overhead in terms of, training, tooling, effort and costs. Also the benefits to be gained from applying these techniques are not easily seen when they work well. A key pillar of systems engineering and systems thinking is the ability to look at a system as a whole. Part of this is getting to grips with what a system really is, it’s interaction with its operational environment and the world around it and to understand the various subsystems that the system is comprised of and their interaction, including people. This is particularly difficult when it comes to complex systems like railways. This project attempts to develop an approach to modelling a whole railway system (or Guided Transport System (GTS) as it is defined in this project) by implementing a Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) approach and techniques. It also proposes definitions of a system and system engineering that are applicable to the Railway industry. Through a common view of a GTS as a whole and a common approach to modelling it, it should be possible to address some of the barriers to systems engineering techniques that currently exist. MBSE has three pillars, a method, a modelling language and a modelling tool (Delligatti, 2014, pp. 4-7). The author has developed a method that can be applied to a whole complex system, ii Whole System Railway Modelling Preliminaries Garry Patrick Greenland such as a GTS, supported by the SysML modelling language implemented through the Enterprise Architect modelling tool (other languages and modelling tools could also be used). The method developed was then tested on a body of students studying for an MSc in Railway Systems Engineering and Integration at the University of Birmingham. This body was chosen because the course is part time and the majority of the students work full time in the industry. Thus the author was able to gain an insight into how diverse the opinions on systems engineering and its application actually are within the industry and get valuable feedback on the systems modelling methodology developed during this research. It has been demonstrated through the development of a partial model of various representative parts of a GTS, that it is possible, within a single model, to capture and represent a large and diverse amount of information about a GTS as it is defined within this thesis. This includes: x its context within the wider world and its operational environment; x its physical structure; x the relationships between its various subsystems and the outside world; x the views of a diverse stakeholder group and their Requirements; and x critical system properties and how these are derived from the various layers of abstraction within the system. The methodology drives the user to develop a model that: 1. is re-usable, e.g. applicable to different railways at different times; 2. is extendable in length (be able to model more railway) and depth (greater levels of detail); iii Whole System Railway Modelling Preliminaries Garry Patrick Greenland 3. allows the inclusion of existing quantitative and qualitative models from other sources; 4. encourages the use of data from existing sources; 5. is open and transparent to allow others to use and add to them; and 6. enables the production of outputs that are readily understandable across disciplinary divides e.g. common representation. iv Whole System Railway Modelling Preliminaries Garry Patrick Greenland This Thesis is dedicated to: my wife Jenny, without whose support, through many years of part time study and learning, this thesis could not have been written. v Whole System Railway Modelling Preliminaries Garry Patrick Greenland Acknowledgements There have been a large number of people who have encouraged and supported me through many years of part time and distance study to get to this point. Mr. Phil Bentley and Mr. Graham Preston both depot engineers at Stewarts Lane Depot, Battersea, without whose support going back to college to complete my ONC/HNC and first degree would not have been possible, and Mr Lynton Washer my shift manager whose encouragement at the start was invaluable. Also Mr. Paul Thomas, Engineering Director at Parsons, now at London Underground, who’s support secured financial support from Parsons. Andrew Pearson and Richard Birkhead who allowed me to carry on this work when I moved to Lloyds Register Rail, now Ricardo Rail, without whose support this thesis could not have been finished. My academic supervisors Professor Clive Roberts and Dr Stuart Hillmansen for their sound advice and support through the more difficult times. Also Dr Joe Silmon for his help with SysML and TRAK. Finally, I owe a debt of gratitude to my colleague Dr Daniel Woodland, whose help and support throughout the last few years have been invaluable. vi Whole System Railway Modelling Preliminaries Garry Patrick Greenland Table of Contents 1 Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Motivation for and Background to the Research ..................................................1 1.2 Scope of this Thesis ................................................................................................6 1.3 Approach ................................................................................................................8 2 Literature Review ................................................................................................. 10 2.1 Literature survey objectives ................................................................................10 2.2 Definition of systems ...........................................................................................10 2.3 Railway system components ...............................................................................12 2.4 System Boundaries ..............................................................................................15 2.5 Systems Engineering and Modelling ....................................................................16 2.6 Conclusions ..........................................................................................................88 3 Research Question and Requirements .................................................................. 92 4 Design .................................................................................................................. 97 4.1 Methodology ........................................................................................................97 4.2 Model organisation ........................................................................................... 101 4.3 Context Model .................................................................................................. 111 4.4 Requirements .................................................................................................... 120 5 Development of Integrated GTS Model ............................................................... 127 5.1 Introduction ...................................................................................................... 127 5.2 System Context and Stakeholder Identification and requirements ................. 127 5.3 Operations scenarios .......................................................................................