Simulation Research on Railway Marshalling Yard Operation Organizations Based on Multi-agent Technology
Marshalling yard operation organizations play a key role in railway freight transportation.To improve the operation efficiency of marshalling yards and speed up the turnover of freight,a simulation model of marshalling yard operation organizations based on multi-agent technology was developed.Combining multi-agent technology and the content of marshalling yard operation organizations,this paper designed the train locomotive,engineering,railcar,train agents and their intelligent calling mechanism,dynamic routing selections,scheduling mechanisms,and the agent transformation function.The agent simulation model of the marshalling yard was constructed from two dimensions of environment modeling and behavior modeling,to realize the operation simulation of inbound disassembled trains,self-marshalled originating trains,and transit trains without reformation,and the dynamic route selection and scheduling mechanism of the moving unit.This way,the simulation model would be more suitable for the pragmatic operation of marshalling yards.Finally,the efficacy of the simulation model,dynamic route selection,and scheduling mechanism was validated through a practical example analysis of a unidirectional hybrid 2-level 3-yard marshalling yard.Moreover,the effect of the disassembly and assembly sequence and the proportion of district transfer trains on the operation efficiency of the marshalling yard was analyzed through experiments.The results illustrate that multi-agent technology can effectively simulate marshalling yard operation organizations,and the simulation model is of great significance for guiding the improvement of the operation efficiency of the marshalling yard.