|
The total length of high-speed lines has steadily increased in EU during the last 30 years. They offer citizens a safe, fast,
comfortable and ecological mode of transport. Safety, reliability and interoperability, are mandatory to guarantee the highest standards.
|
|
To achieve these goals manufactures have to fight against rail bending and welds failures. At the same time, rail lines maintenance is mostly performed on-schedule and is still operator dependent. As a consequence, the demand of instruments able to assess rail integrity in real-time is rising fast. This is due to the time required for lines’ inspection to detect broken welds and bent rails. Since this safety critical task cannot be performed when consists are running, it impinges on railway performance increasing infrastructure unavailability.
|
||
Intelligent Structures eases these problems by introducing a network of small, self powered sensors directly in the nearby of rail welds, switch points and frogs. Our sensors are as small as a coin, as light as a sheet of paper and consume such a small amount of power that they can be powered using vibrational energy scavenged from running consists.
|
 |
|
By including these sensors in new designs or by retrofitting existing lines, infrastructure managers will be able to add auto-diagnosis capabilities by efficiently performing precise damage event detection. This will pave the road to a shift in the maintenance paradigm, from on-schedule to on-condition.
|
||
