Abstract
Wheel out-of-roundness (OOR) inevitably jeopardizes the safety of railway operations. Regular visual inspection and checking by experienced workers are the commonly adopted practices to identify wheel defects. However, the defects may not be spotted timely. The paper puts forward a new method of real-time monitor wheel OOR based on PVDF strain sensor. In this method, the track strain response upon wheel-rail interaction is measured and processed to generate a condition index which directly reflects the wheel condition. Firstly, theoretical model of relationship between PVDF sensor output and wheel/rail loads was set up, and the principle for measuring vertical wheel/rail contact forces was proposed. Secondly, the effects of horizontal wheel/rail force and train speed on the output results have been discussed. Finally, this approach was verified by finite element analysis, and the preliminary results showed that this electromagnetic-immune system provides an effective alternative for wheel defects’ detection.
Highlights
Wheel condition monitoring is one of the critical features to ensure safe and cost-effective train operation in the railroad transportation industry
In order to minimize the costs for repair and maintenance and to meet noise legislation, there is a large economic incentive for real-time train wheel condition monitoring and removing out-of-round wheels before they can cause further damage
Many studies have been conducted to realize wheel defect detection and most of them are based on the analysis of wheel-rail interaction
Summary
Wheel condition monitoring is one of the critical features to ensure safe and cost-effective train operation in the railroad transportation industry. Based on the response of wheel-rail contact forces due to OOR derived from numerical simulations, the sensors were used to measure the rail strain response upon wheel-rail interaction and the frequency component that solely reveals the quality of the interaction was extracted from the signal and processed in order to deduce the defects of passing wheels. The advantages of this sensor system are that both the sensors and measurement equipments installed at the railroad side are passive to EMI and non-zero drift. The method allows in-service and real-time monitoring of wheel condition, which is beneficial to the railway industry
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