Overview
In a modern, comfortable and customer-friendly transportation system it is possible for customers to move from A to B in a comfortable way and within a reasonable amount of time. To fulfil such requirements, it is necessary to permanently monitor the conditions of both the track system and the rail vehicles. Nowadays for both there are plenty of autonomous inspection-systems. But the railway system has to be considered as a whole, as the interaction of rail and wheel is the system’s link when dealing with the dynamic behaviour of a railway vehicle, which at last is responsible for all necessary maintenance tasks. Thus maintenance strategies for rail infrastructure and rail vehicles should be discussed jointly, but for the lack of a suitable measuring system that’s not possible yet.
UV-wave concentrates on developing a measuring system for urban rail traffic based on recording the interactions between rail and wheel. The objective is the development of an easily operable, flexibly applicable, robust, modular measuring system that is able to record the rail vehicle’s response on the infrastructure’s characteristics. Required is a more or less energy self-sufficient prototype of a measuring-device that can be used with all kinds of rail vehicles. For the new measuring system, no dedicated monitoring car is needed, so it’s possible to design a rather cheap device that even the “small” operators can afford.
Funding
Results
Based on recording the dynamic interaction of the wheel-rail-system essential information on the condition of the infrastructure is provided. For the first time it is possible to study special wear-effects caused by the interaction of wheel and rail whose origin for scientific purposes is yet unknown.
The choice between different modes of operation allows dealing with different tasks. Test runs to exactly evaluate the condition of the infrastructure (recording lots of data) are equally possible as continuous monitoring (recording small amounts of data, but for a long time).
Another feature of the new measuring system is the design as an open system. All data collected is available in open data format to be interpreted, allowing interpretation through user-defined programs instead of predefined programs only. As a result, multiple usage of data is easier than with nowadays commonly used measuring systems.
Findings of the study are published by a short presentation (German only) which is available online via the Federal Ministry for Transport, Innovation and Technology (BMVIT):
www2.ffg.at/verkehr/file.php?id=398