Design of Cyber-Physical Systems Architecture for Prognostics and Health Management of High-speed Railway Transportation Systems

The high-speed railway (HSR) transportation system in China has been growing rapidly during the past decade. In 2016, the total length of HSR in China has reached to 22,000 kilometers, and there are over 2,000 pairs of high speed trains operating daily. With the advancement of design and manufacturing technologies, the reliability and construction costs have been improved significantly. However, there is still great need for reduction of their operation and maintenance costs. With such incentive, a pilot project has been launched to develop a prognostics and health management system for rolling stock to transform the maintenance paradigm from preventive to predictive maintenance. Considering the high task variety and big data environment in HSR real-time monitoring system, a cyberphysical system (CPS) architecture is proposed as the framework for its PHM system. This paper reviews the needs of predictive maintenance for the HSR system, and then present a concept design of the CPS-enabled smart operation and maintenance system.