Next Generation On-Board Sensor Technologies for Rolling Stock

In prior work, University Transportation Center for Railway Safety (UTCRS) has developed on-board, wireless sensor technology that makes early and accurate detections of defect initiation in railcar bearings and wheels. This technology has been transferred to industrial partners for field trials, and in the first deployment detected a condemnable wheelset. For the current project, the research team will develop next generation sensors to enable (a) detection of a wider range of safety hazards, including damaged couplers, track defects, and load shifts, (b) even earlier predictions of failures, and (c) further reduction of false positives. The key to these advances will be coordinated sensors with precision synchronization at the level of tens of microseconds and relative position self-awareness at the centimeter level across an entire train, combined with an order of magnitude improvement in sensitivity. This will provide richer datasets that allow comparison of signatures from different bearings on the same bogie, different bogies on the same railcar, and different railcars on the same train. The challenge is implementing these improvements within limitations on power consumption and communication bandwidth. In this 15-month project the team will design, fabricate, and demonstrate new modules that add temporal and spatial awareness to existing vibration, load, and temperature sensing. Due to power consumption and spatial accuracy requirements, this cannot be readily accomplished with Global Positioning System (GPS) or other commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) systems at the wheel level; instead, a dedicated on-board system must be developed. The data acquisition will also be improved based on lessons from past projects, with the goal of obtaining a ten-fold improvement in resolution and sensitivity.

• Record URL:
  https://www.utrgv.edu/railwaysafety/_files/documents/research/exhibit-d_utcrs_utrgv_next_generation_on-board_sensors_2023.pdf
• Supplemental Notes:
  • Partners for this project are Hum Industrial Technology, Inc., and MxV Rail.

Language

• English

Project

• Status: Active
• Funding: $190044
• Contract Numbers:

  69A3552348340

• Sponsor Organizations:

  Office of the Assistant Secretary for Research and Technology

  University Transportation Centers Program
  Department of Transportation
  Washington, DC  United States  20590

  University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

  1201 W. University Dr
  Edinburg, TX  United States  78539
• Managing Organizations:

  University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

  1201 W. University Dr
  Edinburg, TX  United States  78539
• Project Managers:

  Stearns, Amy

• Performing Organizations:

  University of Texas Rio Grande Valley

  1201 W. University Dr
  Edinburg, TX  United States  78539
• Principal Investigators:

  Foltz, Heinrich

  Xu, Ping

  Tarawneh, Constantine

• Start Date: 20230601
• Expected Completion Date: 20240831
• Actual Completion Date: 0
• USDOT Program: University Transportation Centers Program

Subject/Index Terms

• TRT Terms: Automatic data collection systems; Bearings; Detectors; Railroad cars; Railroad rails; Wireless sensors
• Subject Areas: Data and Information Technology; Maintenance and Preservation; Railroads;

Filing Info

• Accession Number: 01898078
• Record Type: Research project
• Source Agency: University Transportation Center for Railway Safety
• Contract Numbers: 69A3552348340
• Files: UTC, RIP
• Created Date: Oct 31 2023 9:03PM