MOBILE ACOUSTIC CONTROL SYSTEM OF WHEEL SETS

Abstract

Defective wheels and axle boxes of cars still remain among main reasons that lead to disasters, accidents and significant material costs for rail transport. In this regard, an extremely important problem is reliable and accurate detection of defaults at the early stage of emergence.

It is difficult to completely eliminate the occurrence of failures in the form of local irregularities on the wheel tread taking structural, technological and operational measures, because their causes can be within a range of unpredictable random factors: short-term dynamic unloading of wheel sets when passing over irregularities of rail tracks, the volatility of the coefficient of friction of the wheels and rails, etc. In this case, the actual task is a rapid identification of a wheel defect arose in transit and timely notification of the train crew and rail services to prevent threats to safety, minimize the likelihood of damage and reduce maintenance time trains.

A new wireless onboard diagnostic system of passenger cars is proposed, which is designed to detect defects of wheel sets. This system is based on the method of acoustic control. Under the body of the passenger car microphones are mounted through which in the automatic mode recording and the analysis of frequency range of an acoustic signal from wheels and axle bearings, allowing detecting timely deviations from the set standards.

This onboard diagnostic acoustic system has obvious advantages over its ground acoustic analogs, since the latter, as known, have problems with the reliability of the diagnosis because of the negative impact on the accuracy of the Doppler effect, especially when trains run past the stationary located microphones at high speeds.