FRACAS design for railway freight cars

Vehicles' reliability, availability, maintainability and safety (RAMS) have become increasingly prominent in contradiction with life cycle cost on account of both speed and load rising in railway transportation. Meanwhile, the Failure Report Analysis and Corrective Action System (FRACAS) is the foundation of RAMS. FRACAS organization and its responsibility system are proposed and established by the analysis of freight failure information management status. Taken Relex FRACAS as the software platform, contents, requirements and formats based on collection and transmission of failure information are customized by product structure tree and failure criterion. On the basic principle of “the information feedback, the closed-loop control”, failure closed-loop management is realized by defining FRACAS workflow throughout products testing and their operations. The application rules of failure information are proposed, which can be realized that failure statistics analysis, trend analysis, reliability and maintainability predication. Finally, a uniform database and knowledge base can be used to supply information support for railway freight car RAMS design and analysis as well as maintenance support strategies made.