A SAFETY RELATED PERSPECTIVE FOR THE POWER SUPPLY SYSTEMS IN RAILWAY INDUSTRY

Abstract

Within its structure railway transportation systems contain very critical subsystems that can seriously harm the system itself, people or the environment if not properly controlled. Therefore, these critical subsystems are analysed according to the related standards and necessary safety functions are implemented, verified and operated. On the other hand, railway power supply system, which is a critical subsystems, is generally properly analysed from a reliability perspective whereas the corresponding safety related functions are roughly examined This paper proposes that the railway power supply systems should be considered as safety critical systems and justifies this proposal using risk analysis as presented in the standard IEC 61508. The safety related functions of the system are examined and each function is modelled in detail using Markov modelling method. These models are implemented over a power supply system of Istanbul Transportation Co. and SIL values of the safety functions are calculated using these modular and easily adaptable Markov models. Furthermore the obtained results are compared with simplistic Fault Tree analysis (FTA) and the significance of accurate calculation is demonstrated.