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A newly installed Remote Condition Monitoring installation delivers a large scale geographically diverse intelligent system performing real-time condition analysis of voltage and frequency for 385 new Jointless Track Circuits on the London Underground. The system is installed across 44 km of deep tube railway in order to predict and prevent failures and subsequent loss of passenger service to the...
Track circuits form a critical part of the UK rail signalling infrastructure. Condition monitoring of track circuits may improve the availability of track circuits, hence improving service levels. Audio frequency track circuit condition monitoring is a relatively new concept and little work has been done on the subject. This paper describes the instrumentation of a length of active track to observe...
Condition monitoring or safety monitor is a cost-effective safety protection technique which is widely used in safety-critical industries, such as nuclear plants and aerospace operation. The adoption of safety monitor offers continuous or real-time safety protection at a high level of diversity and its implementation is relatively simple and thus cost-effective for safety verification and validation...
This paper summarizes a new development of a compact size on-board device for condition monitoring of railway tracks and the monitoring software. Track irregularities are estimated from a vertical and lateral acceleration and roll rate of a car body. A GPS system and a map-matching algorithm are used to pinpoint the location of faults on tracks. The device is driven by Li-ion battery for 6 hours or...
Wireless sensor network systems as supplied by Senceive are now totally accepted as a cost effective, precise and reliable tool for the condition monitoring of rail, geo-technical and structural assets. They are providing for remote monitoring of assets through the use of low cost, battery powered, high precision, self-configuring wireless sensor systems which can be readily installed with a minimum...
Railway track and its support form a system that must maintain line and level under load. Loss of line and level results in increased stress and can lead to greater track geometry degradation and damage to track components. Transition zones are generally designed so that track stiffness changes gradually over some distance rather than suddenly. This paper describes the development of a laser based...
The monitoring of remote assets or earthworks on Network Rail property can be prohibitive for a multitude of reasons not only limited to power, access and deployment complexities. This problem has led to the development of an Energy Harvesting Data Logger or EHDL, this product has been designed to be a low powered, generic data logger, powered from harvested energy and configurable to multiple applications...
The objective of the digital imaging for condition asset management (DIFCAM) project was to show the feasibility of imaging and laser scanning based techniques for tunnel examination. This was successfully done by developing a demonstrator for monitoring the interior of rail tunnels, reducing or eliminating the need for track access and subjective human visual inspections. This is an example of a...
In this study, for realizing efficient condition monitoring of rail corrugation, we developed two measurement tools. One is the on-board monitoring device to detect the condition of rail corrugation that distributed on railway track on the commercial train. Another one is the trolley to measure the rail surface irregularity of the corrugated rail continuously in site. In addition, we propose the method...
By analysing the key factors affecting the safety of the railway, this study aims to construct an information system to monitor safety performances of China National Railway networks. For each type of asset, there is a monitoring system. To integrate individual system information into a common information platform, it is proposed to use advanced computer network and information processing technology...
Modern railway vehicles incorporate a significant level of built-in condition monitoring. Interfacing these systems to vehicle management units supports powerful fault detection and decision support facilities for the vehicle operators and maintainers. The benefits of such systems are attained through close incorporation of the component systems with the vehicle infrastructure including core data...
Dutch rail operator ProRail is tasked with increasing the availability of their network and has set a goal of zero avoidable faults. As ProRail outsources maintenance of the rail network to contractors, going forward new contracts will be based on performance and the number of faults, rather than unit based charging. Additionally, penalties will be issued for failing to meet the requirements of a...
An inertial measurement unit (IMU) comprising three accelerometers and three gyroscopes all of good quality, attached to the bogie of an in-service railway vehicle and suitably processed in conjunction with a tachometer signal and a GPS feed, tracks the location, orientation and trajectory of the bogie. Using this data, the condition of the track geometry can be assessed. By monitoring this data as...
There has been an increase in the use of `train monitoring train' and `infrastructure monitoring infrastructure' RCM systems over the last 5 years; which have demonstrated significant benefits. It can be more efficient to monitor some aspects of train condition from the line-side and to monitor some aspects of the condition of the infrastructure from passing trains. The use of these `cross-industry'...
The article deals with measurements carried out in three trial sections of railway lines in the Czech Republic, where different types of geocomposites were inserted under ballast during the period of 2008 to 2012. In these sections, the longterm monitoring of the durability of geometric characteristics of the track, as well as the degradation of embedded geosynthetic products and the homogeneity of...
Alstom is a worldwide leader in rail equipment and services with experience of implementing and using Remote Condition Monitoring systems. Within the UK, this has notably included supporting maintenance activities on the West Coast Main Line fleet since 2005. Alstom's TrainTracer tool is used on fleets worldwide, and we also implement retrofit of Remote Monitoring Systems to fleets, with references...
Following a review of maintenance costs a major US rail operator identified the need to change the way in which their diesel locomotive fleet was overhauled. This would involve the introduction of new maintenance techniques and detection technology as such a budget of approximately $3.4m was allocated to the improvement works. A rigorous selection process was followed to introduce a worldwide rail...
National Railway Administrations in Northern Europe do not employ systematic procedures in monitoring the current state of vegetation to form the basis of maintenance decision making. Current day vegetation maintenance is largely based on human visual estimates. This paper investigates a machine vision (MV) approach to be able to automatically quantify the amount of vegetation on a given railway section...
Condition monitoring is widely accepted across the rail industry in many different guises and varying degrees of success. So do we really make the best of Condition Monitoring, from basic rudimentary measurements through to more advanced state of the art? This paper aims to break down the barriers of condition monitoring, delving into research both inside and outside the rail industry and proposes...
Condition monitoring and maintenance of bearings for inservice machinery is a priority for railway operators. Degraded bearings can lead to inefficient operation, failures and their associated downtime. Vibration and acoustic emission analysis are well-known techniques for condition monitoring of rolling elements. However, these techniques usually require each bearing to be fitted directly with condition...
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