The purpose of this project was to develop an economical onboard wheel monitoring system for railroad applications. Early detection of rail car wheel/bearing deterioration can help to minimize derailments and reduce damage to track. Advances in low power miniaturized sensors, processors and wireless communication systems can enable onboard wheel monitoring systems to be feasible.
The systems investigated in this project included a miniature device placed on the wheel axle assembly, which did not require any modification to existing equipment on the railcar; and a wireless communication system forming a “discriminatory” mesh network, limited to the railcars on the train of interest, which communicates to a central monitoring station. The system can provide continuous monitoring of bearing temperature, vibration and acoustics, and wheel impact, allowing continuous data analysis.
The Autonomous Rolling Stock System (ARMS) that was tested in this project can provide warnings to train operators as well as railroad car owners before the component failure occurs, so that preventive maintenance can be performed. The field testing successfully demonstrated the extension of the concept to a new wireless, on-wheel hub-mounted ARMS unit that produced the expected data sets and transmitted them to the data collection unit on the train for transmission to a central database external to the train. This project is completed.
