Engineering news
Govia Thameslink Railway (GTR) has installed the sensors on all 40 of its class 365 trains that run between Cambridge, Peterborough and London King’s Cross.
“This significant investment in state-of-the-art technology will improve the reliability of trains on the route, giving our passengers better journeys,” said GTR engineering director Gerry McFadden. “Problems will be highlighted months in advance before these vital components have a chance to break down, avoiding further damage and delays.”
The devices were developed by Perpetuum, a start-up firm that was spun-out from the University of Southampton. They are powered by the vibrations of the trains themselves.
“If a defect is developing, it will create a specific vibration signature which our technology can isolate and email an alert to Great Northern’s engineers at their depot in Hornsey,” said Perpetuum chief executive Steve Turley. “Looking at other train operators, we’ve never had a failure in service for the components our sensors monitor.”
It’s hoped that these kinds of sensors will become commonplace. “Onboard monitoring of vibration through passenger trains provides a unique insight into the condition of the track and the dynamics of the wheel/rail interface," said Justin Southcombe, Perpetuum's commercial director. "Infrastructure Managers around the world are already awarding contracts for track and ride condition monitoring using data collected from intelligent passenger trains and this trend is only going to get stronger."
Farouk Balouchi of the University of Huddersfield’s Institute of Railway Research, who is not involved with Perpetuum told Professional Engineering that sensors will be used in places where the workforce is in danger, and eliminate the need to use people where sensors or instrumentation can be used autonomously.
Farouk Balouchi of the University of Huddersfield’s Institute of Railway Research, who is not involved with Perpetuum told Professional Engineering that sensors will be used in places where the workforce is in danger, and eliminate the need to use people where sensors or instrumentation can be used autonomously.
Where previously, faults would be detected by simply “eyeballing the problem,” sensors can allow railway operators to track degradation over time. Balouchi and colleagues are working with Siemens on one such project. “The technology is relatively inexpensive and allows the trains to inform the condition of the entire network,” said Balouchi. “Over repeated runs we can determine what’s happening with that piece of track in terms of how it’s degrading or how it’s improved after maintenance. It allows a view of the entire network at once.”
The railway industry is inherently conservative and safety conscious, so redundancies will need to be built in. “The use of wireless sensor networks which are self-healing allows an extra layer of safety,” said Balouchi. “So if one sensor fails another sensor will replace its job, or the network will find the malfunctioning sensor and reconfigure it automatically.”