This project investigated the viability of using an array of non-contact, displacement measurement sensors (DMS) to detect railroad car truck hunting. The system is intended to provide information for monitoring the dynamic lateral stability performance of rail car trucks passing a wayside installation.
During this project, there was an opportunity for an evaluation at a revenue service site. The Norfolk Southern Corporation (NS), in conjunction with the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA), conducted a comparative test of truck hunting detection systems as part of their separate ongoing cooperative agreement for wayside component inspection demonstrations. TTCI was allowed to participate in the test and evaluation using the Lynxrail prototype in Flat Rock, Kentucky for this Safety IDEA project. This prototype used an array of paired inductive proximity DMS instead of fiber optic DMS.
Test results indicated that the Lynxrail prototype provided estimates of speed and of carbody end lateral accelerations that were highly positively correlated with those measured by onboard instrumentation. These results validated the concept of truck hunting detection via an array of paired DMS. However, variability was observed in the Lynxrail prototype estimates of RMS lateral accelerations at higher vehicle operating speeds. Future enhancements to the prototype were recommended. The revised Final Report for this project, addressing comments from committee members’ reviews, was submitted in February 2006. This project is completed.
The final report for this IDEA project can be found at:
https://www.trb.org/studies/idea/finalreports/safety/S-06_Final_Report.pdf.
