Powerful simulation software systems have become a standard tool for railroad capacity research. During a simulation run, deadlocks may occur at specific track configurations. A deadlock is a situation in which a number of trains cannot continue their path at all because every train is blocked by another one. This will make simulation results useless. For an adequate use of simulations, deadlocks should either be avoided completely or at least reduced to an acceptable level. Strategies against deadlocks developed in computer science cannot simply be adapted to railroad simulations. Also, typical algorithms developed in operations research for deadlock avoidance on railroads, do not really fit to the conditions of railroad operation. Now, a new solution has been developed that is based on a dynamic route reservation. That principle follows the idea that, before a train may be authorized to enter a track section, a specified number of track sections must be reserved ahead of that train. The number of track sections to be reserved varies depending on a set of logical rules. A track section can be reserved for several trains at the same time. These reservations are stacked in a similar way like stacked routes in an interlocking. The stacked reservations model the enforced train sequence that ensures a deadlock-free operation. That algorithm is currently being implemented into the Railsys simulation software by RMCon and will be a standard feature in all new versions.


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    Title :

    Deadlock Avoidance in Railroad Operations Simulations / Jörn Pachl


    Contributors:

    Publication date :

    2011



    Type of media :

    Miscellaneous


    Type of material :

    Electronic Resource


    Language :

    English



    Classification :

    DDC:    625





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