Keywords: Condition monitoring, railway, railhead, axle bearing, inertial measurement unit, energy harvesting.

Condition monitoring and condition-based maintenance of railway systems is increasingly important to the train operating companies and infrastructure managers. Degraded rolling stock or infrastructure elements can lead to inefficient operation, or even failures and their associated downtime and damage to the track and-or train. Condition monitoring equipment for retrofitting on high speed (HS) lines needs to be low cost and non-intrusive. Such equipment can lead to more efficient maintenance scheduling and can also be used for prognostic purposes. This paper describes the use of some recently developed on-board and lineside monitoring systems: \ i. Locating hunting within long tunnels using an on-board inertial measurement unit (IMU). ii. Identifying railhead defects with an on-board electromagnetic acoustic monitoring system. iii. An on-board energy harvesting axle bearing monitoring system. iv. A lineside acoustic monitoring system for wheel and axle bearing condition. These systems address a number of issues within the HS lines in the UK. This paper also discusses the adaptations required to develop such condition monitoring systems for use in a high-speed railway environment.

purchase the full-text of this paper (price £20)

go to the previous paper
go to the next paper
return to the table of contents
return to IJRT
purchase this issue (price £80 +P&P)