Faulty Wheel Research Articles

State Analysis and Emergency Control of Planetary Rover with Faulty Drive Wheel

Wheel failure is one of the worst problems for a planetary rover working on Mars or the Moon, which may lead to the interruption of the exploration mission and even the loss of mobility. In this study, a driving test of a planetary rover prototype with a faulty drive wheel was conducted, and state analysis and dynamics modeling were carried out. The drag motion relationship between the faulty drive wheel and the normal wheels on the same suspension was established based on the targeted single wheel test (faulty wheel-soil bin). In order to maintain the subsequent basic detection capability of the planetary rover, an emergency control system is proposed that integrates the path planning strategy with faulty wheel priority and the motion control method of correcting heading and coordinating allocation. The experimental results and emergency strategies of this study on simulating Martian soil and terrain can provide researchers with ideas to solve such problems.

Regenerative braking fault compensation control of distributed electric vehicle considering random wheel fault degree

Distributed drive electric vehicles can reduce range anxiety through regenerative braking. However, if the wheel motor torque output fails, it will form an additional yaw moment to the vehicle, causing instability, or deviation and threatening its safety. To solve this problem, the research object is an electric vehicle driven by a four-wheel hub motor. A braking force compensation distribution strategy for front and rear axles is proposed, which combines electronic hydraulic braking (EHB) system compensation control and deviation auxiliary control. Firstly, a fault detection module is established, and the motor’s output torque is estimated by designing a torque observer to obtain the fault degree information of the motor. Secondly, to fully use the motor’s regenerative braking force, the fault-free and faulty electro-hydraulic braking force distribution strategies are designed in the coordinated distribution layer of the electro-hydraulic braking system. The corresponding electro-hydraulic braking force compensation method is selected according to the fault degree of the regenerative braking function, the position of the faulty wheel, and the braking strength. Then, a deviation auxiliary controller is designed based on the model predictive control, and the intervention time of the auxiliary controller is determined according to the vehicle’s state. Finally, the control method is verified based on CarSim/Simulink co-simulation and hardware-in-the-loop (HIL) platform. The test results show that the designed control method can effectively compensate for the regenerative braking failure of random wheel and ensure the braking safety of the vehicle.

State-of-the-Art Wayside Condition Monitoring Systems for Railway Wheels: A Comprehensive Review

In recent decades, there has been a constant demand for faster, longer, and safer railway networks. This also brings challenges for condition monitoring systems in modern railway vehicles. More specifically, critical parts of railway vehicles like wheels degrade over time due to various operational and environmental reasons. Different dynamic effects such as skidding/sliding over the track and the presence of contamination between wheel-rail cause various wheel defects. Faulty wheels ultimately lead to the derailment of railway vehicles. To avoid worst situations like railway derailments, various research has been conducted for developing efficient condition monitoring systems for railway wheels. In addition, there have been some commercial condition monitoring products that can be deployed with railway vehicles. These systems incorporate various sensors such as strain gauges and vision sensors to collect data for diagnosis and prognosis. Various methods have been explored but yet there is a broad research gap in terms of developing advanced onboard condition monitoring systems. With the progress in technology, advanced systems with Machine Learning/Deep Learning methods can provide more efficient and robust condition monitoring of dynamic railway systems. Considering the need for advancement in condition monitoring systems for railway vehicles, a comprehensive review of existing condition monitoring systems for railway wheels is conducted in this paper. The review is aimed at understanding the feasibility and potential of new methods for modern railways. This paper provides a detailed overview of studies on the existing wayside systems and reports their advantages and disadvantages concerning its recently emerging counterpart on-board monitoring systems. Data acquisition systems and analysis methods are critically reviewed which could assist in developing more efficient and reliable condition monitoring systems for railway wheels. This article also reviews the current progress of wayside systems and their limitations. The article is targeted at the researchers and engineers working in this domain, who can pave the way for developing advanced and cost-effective condition monitoring systems for railway wheels using modern technologies.

Detection of Tram Wheel Faults Using MEMS-Based Sensors.

Micro-electromechanical-systems (MEMS) based sensors are used for monitoring the state of machines in condition-based maintenance tasks. This approach is applied at tram depots for the purpose of identifying faulty wheels on trams in order to eliminate defective trams at the entry or dispatch gates. The application of MEMS-based sensors for the detection of wheel faults is the focus of this study. A method for processing of the collected sensor data is developed. It is based on assessing the energy of vibrations at different frequency bands. Maximal Overlap Discrete Wavelet Packet Transform (MODWPT) is used for obtaining a description of the sensor data. The task of finding the energy threshold for detecting faulty wheels, frequency band and parameters of MODWPT which most distinctly distinguish the wheels is the goal of the method. The weighted difference (DW) between the extreme values of energy in a frequency band for normal and faulty wheels is proposed as the measure of the ability to distinguish the wheels. The search for the solution is formulated as a discrete optimisation problem of maximising this measure. Both the simulation and experimental results indicate that faulty wheels have greater vibration energy than normal wheels. The properties of this approach are discussed and evaluated.

Brinell Fault Injection to Enable Development of a Low-Cost Wheel Bearing Fault Monitoring System for Automobiles

Although bearing condition monitoring and fault diagnosis is a widely studied and mature field, applications to automotive wheel bearings have received little attention. This is likely due to the lack of business case, as the vehicle’s four wheel bearings are typically designed to last the vehicle life with low failure rates. Rapid advancements in battery technology are expected to open the door for EVs with million-mile lifespans, exceeding the reliable life of existing low-cost wheel bearing designs. Vehicle designers and fleet owners must choose between paying a higher price for bearings with a longer life or replacing wheel bearings periodically throughout the vehicle life. The latter strategy can be implemented most effectively with the implementation of a low-cost fault detection system on the vehicle.
 
 To develop such a system, data from systems with healthy and faulty wheel bearings is needed. This paper discusses the options for generating this data, such as simulation, bench tests, and vehicle-level tests. The challenges and limitations of each are explored, and the specific challenges of developing an approach for a wheel bearing fault detection system are discussed in detail. A method for injecting Brinell Dent failures is developed, and the results of injecting a total of 40 faulty wheel bearings are presented. Metrics of measuring and summarizing the ground-truth health of a wheel bearing using vibration signals recorded on a test bench are explored. These wheel bearings are used to collect preliminary vehicle data, and some initial analysis is shared highlighting the differences between healthy and faulty wheel bearings, setting the stage for future work to develop a low-cost wheel bearing fault detection system.

Hybrid microphone array signal processing approach for faulty wheel identification and ground impedance estimation in wheel/rail system

This study investigates a microphone array signal processing approach in a theoretical and experimental manner for faulty wheel identification and localisation and ground impedance estimation in a wheel/rail system. The sound source location during wheel rotation is estimated by a broadband weighted multiple signal classification (BW-MUSIC) method, while the impedance of the corresponding ground surface is estimated by the Levenberg–Marquardt and Crank Nicolson (LM–CN) method. The accurate location of the faulty wheel is determined by the kurtosis beamformer. As an acoustics-based noncontact diagnosis method, this technique overcomes the challenge presented by contact between the sensors and the examined structures, and it is more applicable for impulsive signals with broadband features, such as impact noise generated from faults on the wheel surface. The accuracy of the location and impedance estimations is also examined in this study, and the results obtained from the numerical and experimental analyses are observed to be in good agreement. With multiple sound sources and the interference of ground reflection, the BW-MUSIC method can provide a separate and distinct localisation result in the sound map, while the LM–CN method can provide a preferable estimation result of the ground impedance, allowing the faulty wheel to be detected accurately.

Behavioural Fault tolerant control of an Omni directional Mobile Robot with Four mecanum Wheels

This paper analyses the four-mecanum wheeled drive mobile robot wheels configurations that will give near desired performance with one fault and two faults for both set-point control and trajectory-tracking (circular profile) using kinematic motion control scheme within the tolerance limit. For one fault the system remains in its full actuation capabilities and gives the desired performance with the same control scheme. In case of two-fault wheels all combinations of faulty wheels have been considered using the same control scheme. Some configurations give desired performance within the tolerance limit defined while some does not even use pseudo inverse since using the system becomes under-actuated and their wheel alignment and configurations greatly influenced the performance.

Model Predictive Fault Tolerant Control for Omni-directional Mobile Robots

This paper describes the design of a Fault Tolerant Control scheme for an omni-directional mobile robot with four mecanum wheels. We consider actuation faults in which the wheels are not able to receive commands, but still can rotate freely due to the friction with the ground. A Non-linear Model Predictive Controller is employed, in order to appropriately exploit the inherited actuation redundancy of the omni-directional robot, and provide on the fly a unified accommodation solution for multiple combinations of actuation faults. A basic Fault Detection and Isolation scheme is responsible for identifying and isolate the faulty wheels. Accordingly, the control input vector and consequently the dynamic model of the vehicle are reformulated depending on the identified faults. Hence, the predictive control scheme is dynamically updated and calculates the optimal actuation solution, given the faults occurred. The proposed scheme, is able to guide the vehicle to any goal configuration within the workspace, while simultaneously satisfying state (e.g obstacle avoidance) and input (e.g motor limits) constraints. The efficacy of the proposed scheme is evaluated via a set of realistic simulation scenarios, where an omni-directional mobile robot executes a way point tracking mission with obstacle avoidance, inside a restricted workspace and in the presence of different combinations of actuation faults.

Weighing-in-motion wireless system for sustainable railway transport

Railway transport is well known as one of the safest and most energy-efficient transport modes, thus favoring its strengthening as part of a sustainable transport system. Yet, the track service life and the quality of the ride on a railway are dependent upon different factors, which can be assessed by a diverse set of technology based systems. In this context, this paper presents the EVO4Rail project that seeks to design, develop and implement a wireless monitoring system for weighing-in-motion and detecting faulty wheels in railway vehicles, positively impacting railway operation, maintenance and management, ultimately aiming at a sustainable rail transport.

Vibration based diagnosis of wheel defects of metro train sets using one period analysis on the wayside

This research examines two different methods; Wavelet Packet Energy (WPE) and Time-domain Features (TDF) which are effective in faulty signal feature extraction of metro wheels in wayside level using vibration sensors. Signals of each wheelset passing of a trainset with both healthy and faulty wheels are recorded by the vibration sensors which are mounted on both left and right rails and a novel one-period sampling is performed at 51.2 kHz sample rate. Retrieved signal samples are used in the construction of a database which is consistent of healthy and faulty cases. Since the database has insufficient number of faulty samples, the database is balanced by a method so called Adaptive Synthetic Sampling (ADASYN) so that each class has the same number of observations. Two state-of art classifiers; Support Vector Machines (SVM) and Fisher Linear Discriminant Analysis (FLDA) are employed by utilizing 16-fold cross validation to solve the two-class problem. Referring to the results, SVM-I-TDF outperforms by classifying all samples with a success rate of 100 % and other methods have also promising results. Proposed methods may be used in the condition monitoring of metro wheelsets effectively by means of not only performance but also cost-efficiency.

VIBRATIONAL PROCESSES IN THE BALLAST LAYER UNDER NON-STATIONARY LOAD CONDITIONS

[For the English abstract and full text of the article please see the attached PDF-File (English version follows Russian version)].ABSTRACT This article presents the results of experimental research of vibrational processes in the ballast layer at the depths of 100 mm and 200 mm below the sleeper sole under non-stationary loads caused by percussive interaction between the wheels with faults in the form of flat spots on the tread, and the rails. Dependencies are established of vibrational accelerations on the values of vertical percussive loads on the rail caused by faulty wheels. Keywords: railway track, vibrational processes, non-stationary loading, percussive forces, accelerations, crushed stone fragments, ballast layer, wheel faults.

Fault-tolerant control of electric vehicles with in-wheel motors using actuator-grouping sliding mode controllers

Although electric vehicles with in-wheel motors have been regarded as one of the promising vehicle architectures in recent years, the probability of in-wheel motor fault is still a crucial issue due to the system complexity and large number of control actuators. In this study, a modified sliding mode control (SMC) is applied to achieve fault-tolerant control of electric vehicles with four-wheel-independent-steering (4WIS) and four-wheel-independent-driving (4WID). Unlike in traditional SMC, in this approach the steering geometry is re-arranged according to the location of faulty wheels in the modified SMC. Three SMC control laws for longitudinal velocity control, lateral velocity control and yaw rate control are designed based on specific vehicle motion scenarios. In addition the actuator-grouping SMC method is proposed so that driving actuators are grouped and each group of actuators can be used to achieve the specific control target, which avoids the strong coupling effect between each control target. Simulation results prove that the proposed modified SMC can achieve good vehicle dynamics control performance in normal driving and large steering angle turning scenarios. In addition, the proposed actuator-grouping SMC can solve the coupling effect of different control targets and the control performance is improved.

A study of railway wheel profile parameters used as indicators of an increased risk of wheel defects

The capacity demands on railways will increase in the future, as will demands for a robust and available system. The availability of a railway system is dependent on the condition of its infrastructure and rolling stock. To inspect rolling stock so as to prevent damage to the track due to faulty wheels, infrastructure managers normally install wayside monitoring systems along the track. Such systems indicate, for example, wheels that fall outside the defined safety limits and have to be removed from service to prevent further damage to the track. Due to the nature of many wayside monitoring systems, which only monitor vehicles at defined points along the track, damage may be induced on the track prior to fault detection at the location of the system. Such damage can entail capacity-limiting speed reductions and manual track inspections before the track can be reopened for traffic. The number of wheel defects must therefore be kept to a minimum. In this paper, wheel profile parameters measured by a wayside wheel profile measurement system, installed along the Swedish Iron Ore Line, are examined and related to warning and alarm indications from a wheel defect detector installed on the same line. The study shows that an increased wheel wear, detectable by changes in the wheel profile parameters, could be used to reduce the risk of capacity-limiting wheel defect failure events and their reactive measures.

Diagnostics of the wheel thread of railway rolling stock

Purpose. At present, the devastating impact of faulty wheels on rails on the move is a major problem of railway transport. This factor is one of the most important, which causes the shift from traditional manual methods of verification and external examination to the automated diagnostic system of rolling stock in operation. Methodology. To achieve this goal the main types of wheel damages and the way they appear are analyzed. The methods for defects and abnormalities of the wheel thread determining as well as their advantages and disadvantages were presented. Nowadays these methods are under usage in both the international practice and in the one of the CIS countries. Findings. The faulty wheel sound on the move was researched and analyzed. The necessity of using the automated system, enabling one to reduce significantly the human factor is substantiated. Originality. The method to determine the wheel thread damage on the basis of a sound diagnostic is proposed. Practical value. Automatic tracking system of the wheels condition allows performing their more qualitative diagnostics, detecting a fault at the early stage and forecasting the rate of its extension. Besides detecting the location of the faulty wheel in the rolling stock, it is also possible to trace the dynamics of the fault extension and to give the recommendations on how to eliminate it.

Fault-Tolerant Control With Active Fault Diagnosis for Four-Wheel Independently Driven Electric Ground Vehicles

This paper presents a fault-tolerant control approach for four-wheel independently driven (4WID) electric vehicles. An adaptive control-based passive fault-tolerant controller is designed to ensure vehicle system stability and to track the desired vehicle motion when an in-wheel motor/motor driver fault happens. Due to the system actuation redundancy, it is challenging to isolate the faulty wheel and to accurately estimate the control gain of the faulty in-wheel motor/motor driver for 4WID electric vehicles. An active fault diagnosis (FD) approach is thus proposed to explicitly isolate and evaluate the fault. Based on the estimated control gain of the faulty wheel, the control efforts of all the wheels are redistributed to relieve the torque demand on the faulty wheel. Simulations using a high-fidelity CarSim full-vehicle model show the effectiveness of the proposed in-wheel motor/motor driver active fault diagnosis and fault-tolerant control approaches in various driving scenarios.