Condition Monitoring of Rail Transport Systems: A Bibliometric Performance Analysis and Systematic Literature Review.

Mariusz Kostrzewski,Rafał Melnik

doi:10.3390/s21144710

Abstract

Condition monitoring of rail transport systems has become a phenomenon of global interest over the past half a century. The approaches to condition monitoring of various rail transport systems—especially in the context of rail vehicle subsystem and track subsystem monitoring—have been evolving, and have become equally significant and challenging. The evolution of the approaches applied to rail systems’ condition monitoring has followed manual maintenance, through methods connected to the application of sensors, up to the currently discussed methods and techniques focused on the mutual use of automation, data processing, and exchange. The aim of this paper is to provide an essential overview of the academic research on the condition monitoring of rail transport systems. This paper reviews existing literature in order to present an up-to-date, content-based analysis based on a coupled methodology consisting of bibliometric performance analysis and systematic literature review. This combination of literature review approaches allows the authors to focus on the identification of the most influential contributors to the advances in research in the analyzed area of interest, and the most influential and prominent researchers, journals, and papers. These findings have led the authors to specify research trends related to the analyzed area, and additionally identify future research agendas in the investigation from engineering perspectives.

Highlights

Condition monitoring of certain devices is applied in a particular system in order to detect changes or analyze trends in controlling particular parameters, and most of all to prevent potential failures of a system
The approaches applied to rail infrastructure condition monitoring have evolved from manual maintenance, through methods connected to the application of sensors, up to the currently discussed techniques focused on the terms of Industry 4.0
As mentioned at the end of the previous section, we initially present an analysis of selected papers connected to various types of sensors used in different solutions connected to condition monitoring in railway transport The list of review papers’ specific keywords starts with “acceleration sensors” and “accelerometers”

Summary

Introduction

Condition monitoring of certain devices is applied in a particular system in order to detect changes or analyze trends in controlling particular parameters, and most of all to prevent potential failures of a system. The enormous increase in the quantities of generated data—namely, big data—requires diagnostic procedures to be automated Such a challenge induced the need for up-to-date and improved methods of autonomous interpretation of condition monitoring data (mainly vibration methods). This has led the authors to the aim of this review paper, which is the consideration of several pieces of research focused on the scientific area of rail transport systems’ condition monitoring. The authors of this review paper took into consideration two distinct methods of scientific literature analysis: on the one hand, a bibliometric performance analysis (whose component part is meta-analysis) was carried out, and on the other hand, a systematic literature review was performed This briefly presented background allows us to state that no complex review papers connected to condition monitoring for rail transport were noted. This study is related both to passenger and freight railroad transport systems’ condition monitoring—in aspects connected to both rail vehicles and tracks

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Conclusion