Search

One of the major challenges of railway transportation is to maintain the coach and bogie system for ensuring safety of passengers and goods, and maintain punctuality. In this context, there is a need to study the maintenance activities as well as humans involved in it. The present work aims to identify and analyse human factors responsible for coach and bogie maintenance of railway system. Thirty six human factors were identified. Principal component analysis (PCA) and factor analysis (FA) are used here. Three principal components were identified which represents 99% of the variance in the whole dataset. Factor analysis is performed on these three principal components to find most important factors based on individual factor loadings. Human machine interface, working environment, shift patterns, safety cultures, leadership, time pressure, situational awareness, perception, interpretation and training procedure were found to be few very important human factors.

AbstractIn this communication, emphasis is given to consider different types of growth from phenomenological point of view in a generalized manner. Truly linear behaviour of the system is examined with the help of phenomenological approach. It is also shown that the parameters of a biological growth following West-type or von Bertalanffy equations are controlled by two phenomenological coefficients, instead of one as found in the literature. They contribute in a different manner in energy intake and metabolic cost. As a result, two different growth mechanisms controlling resultant growth process behave differently in case of energy intake and metabolic cost. It is also established that some phenomenological classes that may indicate a common growth mechanism with different degree of intensity, are following generalized features. As a consequence, they can be grouped with a generalized solution and differential equation. A phenomenological class representing non-linear growth process is also proposed here from theoretical consideration. Some well-known classes are also reexamined with some of their minute properties. Special attention is given to find the role of phenomenological coefficients in determining the growth feature of a phenomenological class and it is found that phenomenological coefficients of a class may lead to a specific type of growth that is generally presented by different phenomenological class.