Automation of railway switch and crossing inspection (original) (raw)
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On the Fault Detection and Diagnosis of Railway Switch and Crossing Systems: An Overview
Applied Sciences, 2019
Railway switch and crossing (S&C) systems have a very complex structure that requires not only a large number of components (such as rails, check rails, switches, crossings, turnout bearers, slide chair, etc.) but also different types of components and technologies (mechanical devices to operate switches, electrical and/or electronic devices for control, etc.). This complexity of railway S&C systems makes them vulnerable to failures and malfunctions that can ultimately cause delays and even fatal accidents. Thus, it is crucial to develop suitable condition monitoring techniques to deal with fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) in railway S&C systems. The main contribution of this paper is to present a comprehensive review of the existing FDD techniques for railway S&C systems. The aim is to overview the state of the art in rail S&C and in doing so to provide a platform for researchers, railway operators, and experts to research, develop and adopt the best methods for their applicatio...
University of Birmingham On the fault detection and diagnosis of railway switch and crossing systems
2019
Railway switch and crossing (S&C) systems have a very complex structure that requires not only a large number of components (such as rails, check rails, switches, crossings, turnout bearers, slide chair, etc.) but also different types of components and technologies (mechanical devices to operate switches, electrical and/or electronic devices for control, etc.). This complexity of railway S&C systems makes them vulnerable to failures and malfunctions that can ultimately cause delays and even fatal accidents. Thus, it is crucial to develop suitable condition monitoring techniques to deal with fault detection and diagnosis (FDD) in railway S&C systems. The main contribution of this paper is to present a comprehensive review of the existing FDD techniques for railway S&C systems. The aim is to overview the state of the art in rail S&C and in doing so to provide a platform for researchers, railway operators, and experts to research, develop and adopt the best methods for their applicatio...
Improving the Maintenance of Railway Switches through Proactive Approach
Electronics
A strong necessity for faster mass transport with high capacities and frequent runs has put pressure on railway infrastructure. These changes require an improvement in the maintenance activities that need to be planned carefully to reduce as much as possible their impacts on the actual use of the infrastructure. As a consequence, it is crucial to continuously monitor the technical equipment of the railroad tracks in the most efficient way. Railway switches operate in harsh environmental conditions. However, their reliability requirements are high due to safety and economic factors. Their maintenance depends on the data collected and the decisions on due corrective actions. The more frequent the data collection, the shorter the decision cycle; and the more intuitive the data visualization, the better the confidence in the system. This paper presents some tangible results, where the MANTIS concepts were applied to the use-case of railway switches to introduce continuous monitoring and...
Development and Evaluation of New Concepts and Systems for Railway Switches and Crossings
Transportation research procedia, 2020
The Shift2Rail/Horizon2020 project “Switch and Crossing Optimal Design and Evaluation” (S-CODE) is a partnership of nine organizations who have come together to consider radical solutions for the future of railway switching. The project used horizon scanning and backcasting techniques to identify potential game-changing technologies and concepts that may feature in future switch designs. Technical development and evaluation work streams have elaborated and prototyped these elements, allowing evaluation of their suitability both in isolation and as integrated sub-system solutions. The project is currently developing subsystem demonstrators and recommendations for technological elements to be included in future switching solutions. This paper presents a subset of the concepts and some of the technological developments being considered across the different technical work streams. The paper considers: condition monitoring and fault-tolerant control, wheel/rail interface optimization, lo...
Proactive Maintenance of Railway Switches
2018 5th International Conference on Control, Decision and Information Technologies (CoDIT), 2018
Railway switches operate in harsh environmental conditions; still, their reliability requirements are high due to safety and economic factors. Once deployed, their maintenance depends on the data collected on their status, and the decisions on due corrective actions. The more regular this data collection and decision cycle is, the better confidence their operator has on effective and proper service. Proactive maintenance, in general, targets exactly this: rather than scheduling maintenance actions based on operating hours or servicing volume, actions should be taken when it is really needed. This requires the effective combination of data collection, analysis, presentation and decision making processes. The MANTIS project proposes a reference architecture for proactive maintenance, supported by the concept of cyber-physical systems. Besides suggesting data collection, processing and presentation methods and tools for this, the results were applied in various domainsincluding production systems, the energy grid, utility vehicles, or railways. The current paper presents data collection, analysis and presentation concepts related to proactive maintenance, applied on railway switches.
Automatic Track Inspection in Railway Network
IOSR Journal of Electrical and Electronics Engineering, 2014
In India rail transport occupies a prominent position in providing the necessary transport infrastructure to sustain needs of a rapidly growing economy. Today, India possesses the fourth largest railway network in the world. However, in terms of the reliability and safety parameters, we have not yet reached truly global standards. The main problem about a railway analysis is detection of cracks in the structure. If these deficiencies are not controlled at early stages they might lead to a number of derailments resulting in a heavy loss of life and property. This project proposes a cost effective solution to the problem of railway track crack detection utilizing RF control assembly which tracks the exact location of faulty track which then mended immediately so that many lives will be saved.
2020
Railway switches are crucial assets since they enable trains to change tracks without stopping. Larger parts of the infrastructure are compromised when certain switches fail. Regular inspections, maintenance and repairs are required to increase switch reliability, making them costly assets. Monitoring systems help determining the condition of assets. Nowadays nearly thousand switches in the Netherlands are remotely monitored by Strukton Rail. The current version of this monitoring system has helped to identify degrading and failing switches, but it also generates false alarms. There is room for improvement in how the monitoring system supports asset managers in making decisions regarding the asset. Here, we present a workflow that exploits switch monitoring data under real operation conditions. The running workflow implements a machine-learning model for automatic detection of anomalous switch functioning. Models for predicting switch degradation and failure evolution, and for ident...
International Journal of Applied Mathematics, Electronics and Computers, 2016
Today, railway transportation is one of the transport modes commonly used. Compared to other transport modes, railway traffic is highly critical. Multiple railway vehicles run constantly on one or two lines. Rail switch passages are used to prevent locomotives from colliding with one another and avoid traffic disruptions. Through switch passages, locomotives pass from one line to another. Friction between rail and wheels on switch passages is considerably high. This friction leads to failures on switch passages. Unless these failures are diagnosed early and remedied, significant accidents emerge. In this study, a new approach based on image processing has been presented for detection of rail switch passages on railway lines. A test vehicle has been created in order to test the proposed approach and apply it on a real-time system. Railway line is monitored by digital cameras fixed on this test vehicle. Image-processing approach is developed on the real-time images captured from the railway line and the switch passages on the line are detected. In addition, by specifying the train route, the fault which occurring at the point of the switches is detected. The image-processing approach consists of three main parts including pre-processing, feature extraction and processing of the features obtained. At the pre-processing stage, the basic image processing methods are used. At the feature extraction stage, Canny edge extraction algorithm is used and hence the edges in the image are detected. Hough transform method is used at the stage of processing of the extracted features. Following Hough transform stage, straight lines and angles of these lines are obtained on the image. Taking into account the angle of each straight line, the junction points of the lines are calculated. Thus, rail switch passage and switch types are detected. The proposed image-processing approach is highly fast and real time-based. Compared to the existing studies in the literature, it is seen that the proposed method gives fast and successful results. This study intends to diagnose the failures on switch passages early and prevent potential accidents.