Formal Reliability Analysis of Railway Systems Using Theorem Proving Technique

In recent years, high-speed railway has been rapidly developed and deployed around the world including Germany, China, France, and Japan. The continuous endeavor to operate these trains at higher speeds has led to the development of high-speed railways into a new era. For instance, the high-speed railways in China had been operating at speeds of 300 km/h, but the introduction of the Beijing–Shanghai high-speed railway in June 2011 has further ushered China toward superhigh-speed trains that can operate at speeds of 380 km/h [1]. Due to the widespread coverage and continuous operation of the railway systems, the rigorous reliability analysis of these high-speed trains is a dire need. Moreover, a slight malfunctioning in the train components may cause undesirable delays at the arrival stations or even the loss of human lives in extreme cases. Reliability block diagrams (RBDs) [2] are commonly used to develop reliability models for high-speed railway systems. Traditionally, these reliability models are analyzed by paper-and-pencil proof methods and simulation tools. However, the paper-and-pencil methods are prone to human errors for large systems, and it is often the case that many CONTENTS