Life cycle cost modeling for railway vehicle

Life cycle costing is one of the most effective cost- approaches when we choose a solution from series of alternative so the least long-term cost ownership is achieved. Life cycle costing in railway industry has been focused on the prediction of investment of railway vehicles. But in today, the life cycle cost (LCC) prediction on total railway system is highly necessary. In this paper, we presented a life cycle cost model of railway vehicle as a basic study for evaluating the life cycle cost of total railway system; track, signaling, power supply and station et al. The life cycle costing model is mainly consisted of initial investment, annual operation and maintenance, and disposal costs. We basically defined a model for conventional railway vehicle based on the UNIFE LCC model. But some cost categories expanded to make our model represents domestic problems which cannot be covered in the UNIFE LCC model. We also applied our LCC model for the estimation of LCC on the brake disks and pads of commercial operating subway vehicles in Korea for our model verification. We found the usefulness of our model.