SHIMLA: Indian Railways will soon install technology that will help identify defects in the underframe of the coach and wheels in real-time and help prevent derailments.
A total of 25 locations have been identified for the installation of online monitoring of rolling stock (
OMRS), including on the Surat-Vadodara section that also handles Mumbai-New Delhi Rajdhani Express. The total cost of the project in Phase I iwas Rs 113 crore.
Principal chief mechanical engineer Arun Arora said, "In the next phase 40 locations have been identified. We have already installed this technology on the Delhi-Panipat section of Ambala division."
The trials were carried out successfuly in Lucknow division in 2013.
Under the new technique, the faults in the Rolling stock can be detected while on run which is a big advantage as it will make maintenance faster, reducing turnaround time, thereby ensuring availability of high number of wagons/coaches etc for operation.
Conventional method to maintain passenger coaches, wagons and locomotives is to physically examine when these are in stationary condition at the maintenance depots.
This technique involves placing arrays of microphones and sensors that record the audible noise and forces generated by the running coaches, wagons and locomotives on the sides of a railway track.
A second railway board official said, "As soon as the train passes via this hi-tech device it will capture the sounds of the underframe of the coaches, bearing of wheels and axle. Based on the basis of the sound it will determine whether any of the 35 parameters that it observes has any defect."
The defect can be categorised as Yellow which requires attention and Red which means caution.
Once a defect is identified, an alert will be generated in the control room by capturing the coach number so that fault can be attended precisely.
The OMRS equipment is so sensitive and accurate that it is often able to indicate the specific sub-component that is performing under par. Moreover, this can be monitored remotely using mobile communication facilities. In the conventional method, it is nearly impossible to detect this problem unless major assemblies are completely dismantled and checked at the maintenance depot.
During the trial the technology has successfully detected a number of wheel bearing faults avoiding the problem of overheating, which results in the stoppage of the train.
