Railway Systems

The current world-wide market for railway products is about 40 billion € p. a. (excl. infrastructure), showing growth rates of about 4-5% in non-European markets, with an estimated 80% share of European railway industries. The railway sector shares an increasing reliance on embedded software as well as growth rates with the automotive and avionics sectors, with costs for software testing and certification amounting up to 50% of the budget. Hence methods which yield a reduction of these costs are instrumental for maintaining a leading market position. ERRAC´s safety target for 2020, based on an assumed increase in passenger traffic by a factor of 3, calls for reducing the absolute number of passenger fatalities by 50% and the total number of fatalities caused by externalities by 75% compared with 2002 levels.

Example Projects

SFB/TR 14 AVACS. The DFG-funded Collaborative Transregional Research Center AVACS (Automatic Verification and Analysis of Complex Systems, http://www.avacs.org) is carried out jointly between the CvO University Oldenburg (coordinating university), Albert-Ludwigs University Freiburg and Saarland University, the Max-Planck Institute Informatik in Saarbrücken and ETH Zurich. The project addresses the rigorous mathematical analysis of models of complex safety critical computerized systems, such as aircrafts, trains, cars, or other artifacts, whose failure can endanger human life. It aims to advance the state of the art in automatic verification and analysis techniques from its current level, where it is applicable only to isolated facets (e.g., concurrency, time, continuous control, stability, dependability), to a level allowing a comprehensive and holistic verification of such systems.

OPRAIL. This BMBF project provides a process for the development of on board train systems conformant to the ETCS standard, meeting the requirements of CENELEC norms 50126, 50128, and 50129 on the software and systems development process and the RAMS process.

ERTMS Operational Rules. Within the working team "Exhaustiveness" of the Operational Rules Group (EEIG Users Group) it will be traced whether all the requirements of the system requirements specification for ETCS are represented in the operational rules. The goal is to develop harmonized Europe-wide operational rules, to prove their exhaustiveness and to validate the functional analysis, and to identify national deviations.

Euro-Interlocking. The Euro-Interlocking is a consortium of 31 railways and suppliers with the objective of significantly reducing the life cycle costs of interlocking systems in Europe. Both the DLR and OFFIS are participating, with OFFIS being a member of the steering board as well as the process advisory board.

RanTest. This BMBF project researches methods for risk-oriented testing of requirements based on a new approach towards risk priority.

InteGRail - This EU project aims to create a holistic, coherent information system to integrate the major railway subsystems and deliver a higher level of coordination and cooperation between the key railway processes. The objective is to achieve higher levels of performance of the railway system in terms of capacity, average speed and punctuality, safety and the optimised use of resources. The project is coordinated by UNIFE, the association of European's railway supply industry.

Interoperability. The basic research project technical and operational Interoperability deals with the collection of the status of the railway operation and current potentials. The urgent tasks to be fulfilled are the cross acceptance and the safety assessment of the new European Train Control System (ETCS).

NoE EURNEX. EURNEX is the European Rail Research Network of Excellence and aims to integrate a fragmented research landscape, promote the railways contribution to sustainable development and improve the competitiveness and economic stability of the European rail sector. DLR is contributing to the poles strategy and economics, operation and system performance, rolling stock, product qualification methods, safety and security and the pole infrastructure and signalling.

NoE SAMNET. This project concentrates on the implementation of safety and interoperability directives. Its aim is to obtain an agreement on safety targets, methods and indicators based on the output of SAMRAIL and to identify topics that need further research. The project under the leadership of INRETS and UIC brings together a large number of partners from science and industry.

UNISIG – Union of European Railway Signal Industries. Within the UNISIG Test sequences project DLR defines the interoperability test cases and test sequences for train onboard equipments together with Alstom, Bombardier, Siemens and others. These sequences are validated in the laboratory RailSiTe®. These test cases and sequences named SUBSET 76 will become part of the Technical Specification for Interoperability (TSI) of the European Commission.

Link Menü

Alternativ gelangen Sie auch hier zu den verschiedenen Anwendungsdomänen und Forschungsgebieten.

• Anwendungsdomänen
  • Automotive
  • Avionics
  • Railway Systems
• Forschungsgebiete
  • Human Centered Engineering
  • System/Embedded Software Development Process
  • Safety and Certification Process