A Review on Condition Monitoring Technologies for Railway Rolling Stock

Abstract

In recent years, considerable research has been carried out to improve the safety of the railways. Much of the research has been in the area of development of sensors to capture health of the railway equipment. So far, no comprehensive review of literature has been carried out for condition monitoring of the railways. Most of the accidents in the railways are due to wheel and bearing failures, which causing derailment of the train. The present paper gives a comprehensive review of the sensors available for assessing the health of these components. Wayside sensing technology is found to be more popular compared to the on-board sensing technology because of economic modeling of damage. Comparative analyses of various sensing technologies have been performed to understand their usefulness for estimation of a particular fault. The paper also summarizes different diagnostic tools used for fault identification of the component such as wheel and bearing. Case studies are included to show the usefulness of condition monitoring technologies for fault identification in railways.