Methodology for Railway Automation Study and Automatic Generation of PLC Programs

This paper presents an original approach to standardization of Electrical Traction's work of railway. This approach was developed within an industrial thesis, financed by the SNCF (French acronym for National Society of French Railways) in association with the CReSTIC (Research Center in Information and Communication Science and Technologies), laboratory of university of Reims Champagne-Ardenne. It consists of two axes of improvement. The first one concerns the standardization and automatic generation of deliverables (wiring diagrams, PLC programs...) established initially by the systems engineers. Therefore these latter will avoid repetitive tasks which can lead to mental underload and then, focus their attention on cognitive tasks. The second axe of the proposed methodology consists in integrating a robust filter based on the use of safety constraints in a PLC program, so that the safety of the system can be ensured whatever the functional program. Thus, this solution guarantees safety without changing the know-how of the systems engineers. This paper presents only the first axe of the proposed methodology.