In this study, we present a general methodology that combines the reliability theory with physics of failure for reliability prediction of an LED driver. More specifically, an integrated LED lamp, which includes an LED light source with statistical distribution of luminous flux, and a driver with a few critical components, is considered. The Wiener process is introduced to describe the randomness of lumen depreciation. The driver's survival probability is described using a general Markov Chain method. The system compact thermal model (physics of failure model) is developed to couple with the reliability methods used. Two scenarios are studied: Scenario S1 considers constant driver's operation temperature, while Scenario S2 considers driver's temperature rise due to lumen depreciation. It has been found that the wide life distribution of LEDs will lead to a large range of the driver's survival probability. The proposed analysis provides a general approach for an electronic system to integrate the reliability method with physics models.@en

This chapter investigates the reliability of the integrated LED lamps with electrolytic capacitor-less LED drivers. Firstly, the impact of the interaction between the degradations of the LED light source and the driver on the lumen depreciation is studied. The electronic-thermal simulation was carried out to obtain the history of temperatures of LED and driver, the driver’s output current, and the luminous flux considering the variations of temperature and current throughout the operation life. It is found that the ultimate lamp’s lifetime is significantly less than the individual lifetimes of the preselected LED and driver. It is concluded that it is necessary to apply the electronic-thermal simulations to predict the lifetime of LED lamps when driver’s lifetime is comparable to the LED’s lifetime. Secondly, this chapter focuses on predicting the catastrophic failure of an electrolytic capacitor-free LED driver during the lumen depreciation process. Electronic-thermal simulations are utilized to obtain the lamp’s dynamic history of temperature and electrical current for two distinct modes: constant current mode (CCM) and the constant optical output (CLO) mode, respectively. A fault tree method is applied to calculate the system’s MTTF, and the LED’s lifetime also is calculated. The CLO mode increases the LED’s current exponentially to maintain the constant light output. As a result, junction temperatures of LEDs, MOSFET, and diode rise significantly, leading a shorter lifetime and MTTF. Compare with the current of the MOSFET, the increased junction temperature has larger effects on the failure rate. The MOSFET contributes more to the driver’s failure rate than the diode. For the CCM mode, junction temperatures increase slightly and have a little shorter lifetime and MTTF.@en

With the aim of supporting future traffic needs, an account of how to reconstruct an existing cyclic timetable by inserting additional train services will be given in this paper. The Timetable-based Extra Train Services Inserting (TETSI) problem is regarded as an integration of railway scheduling and rescheduling problem. The TETSI problem therefore is considered involving many constraints, such as flexible running times, dwell times, headway and time windows. Characterized based on an event-activity graph, a general Mixed Integer Program model for this problem is formulated. In addition, several extensions to the general model are further proposed. The real-world constraints that concerning the acceleration and deceleration times, priority for overtaking, allowed adjustments, periodic structure and frequency of services are incorporated into the general model. From numerical investigations using data from Shanghai-Hangzhou High-Speed Railway in China, the proposed framework and associated techniques are tested and shown to be effective.@en