Fleet of sensors for autonomous railway condition monitoring

Important results from the project

The purpose of the project was to work towards an autonomous maintenance strategy for railway fasteners using condition monitoring via trains in operation. By using passenger and freight trains as carriers of robust and autonomous sensors, a greater amount of information about the status of the facility will be created. The goal of the project was to test and develop a cloud-based solution and business model for a scalable implementation of the magnetic field-based sensor for the inspection of railway fasteners.

Expected long term effects

The project resulted in a developed method for how the information from a measurements sensor for railway fastener inspection should be analyzed and handled in a context where a fleet of sensors is installed on a variety of trains and operators. In this way, different measurements can now be synchronized with each other so that changes in the fastener status can be monitored. The project also resulted in a description of how a system of sensors can be implemented in Sweden or internationally where different business interests and incentives are taken into account.

Approach and implementation

The project´s work consisted of two parts. The first part dealt with the development of the cloud-based algorithm for the synchronization of measurement data from various measurements via trains in operation. This work relied on measurements from trains in operation. The work included a number of technical and practical challenges as the measurements had to be adapted to the schedule of the locomotive. The task required not only software work but also changes in hardware solutions. The part with the business situation was more theoretical and contained fewer practical problems.