A study of railway wheel profile parameters used as indicators of an increased risk of wheel defects

• The capacity demands on the railways will increase in the future, as well as the demands for a robust and available system. The availability of the railway system is dependent on the condition of the infrastructure and the rolling stock. To inspect the rolling stock and to prevent damage to the track due to faulty wheels, infrastructure managers normally install wayside monitoring systems along the track. Such systems indicate, for example, wheels that fall outside the defined safety limits and have to be removed from service to prevent further damage to the track. Due to the nature of many wayside monitoring systems, which only monitor vehicles at definite points along the track, damage may be induced on the track prior to fault detection at the location of the system. Such damage can entail capacity-consuming speed reductions and manual track inspections before the track can be opened for traffic again. The number of wheel defects must therefore be kept to a minimum. In this paper wheel profile parameters measured by a wayside wheel profile measurement system, installed along the Swedish Iron Ore Line, are examined and related to warning and alarm indications from a wheel defect detector installed on the same line. The study shows that an increased wheel wear, detectable by changes in the wheel profile parameters could be used to reduce the risk of capacity-consuming wheel defect failure events and its reactive measures.

Subject headings

TEKNIK OCH TEKNOLOGIER  -- Samhällsbyggnadsteknik -- Annan samhällsbyggnadsteknik (hsv//swe)

ENGINEERING AND TECHNOLOGY  -- Civil Engineering -- Other Civil Engineering (hsv//eng)

Keyword

Drift och underhållsteknik

Operation and Maintenance

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)