Lineside and on-board monitoring techniques for infrastructure and rolling stock on high-speed lines

Condition monitoring and condition-based maintenance of railway systems is increasingly important to the train operating companies and infrastructure managers. Degraded rolling stock or infrastructure elements can lead to inefficient operation, or even failures and their associated downtime and damage to the track and/or train. Condition monitoring equipment for retrofitting on high speed (HS) lines needs to be low cost and non-intrusive. Such equipment can lead to more efficient maintenance scheduling and also be used for prognostic purposes.

This paper will describe the use of some recently developed on-board and lineside monitoring systems:

i. Locating hunting within long tunnels using an on-board inertial measurement unit (IMU).
ii. Identifying railhead defects with an on-board electromagnetic acoustic monitoring system.
iii. An on-board energy harvesting axle bearing monitoring system.
iv. A lineside acoustic monitoring system for wheel and axle bearing condition.

These systems address a number of issues within the HS lines in the UK.

This paper will also discuss the adaptations required to develop such condition monitoring systems for use in a high-speed railway environment.