| Summary: |
The rail sector has been playing an increasingly important role in society, and safety in traffic and
maintenance costs are important aspects for railway managers and operators. Monitoring systems
aim to contribute to these two aspects: safety and optimization of maintenance actions. However,
current monitoring systems placed on the railway, despite identifying geometric defects in the wheels,
such as flats, do not categorize them in terms of severity or identify in operation, risk situations in
railway circulation, such as unbalanced loads and loop movements.
In this context, the WAY4SafeRail project aims to design a low-cost monitoring system capable
of: (i) assessing the condition of the train wheels in operation, monitoring and categorizing their
severity; (ii) detecting situations of instability in railway circulation, such as unbalanced loads and
loop movement; iii) identifying events occurring in infrastructure not related to the passage of trains
that may have an impact on the safety of movement.
It is intended that the monitoring system can be applicable to various data acquisition and
instrumentation equipment?s installed in railway infrastructures. As such, the main focus of Research
will be on the design of tools for the acquisition, processing and communication of data obtained
and on the use of analytical techniques and artificial intelligence to identify the deviation from the
expected condition.
The project will be structured around 6activities: A1 - Project management; A2 -Requirements and
Specifications; A3- Monitoring System; A4 ? Knowledge Extraction; A5 - Integration, Tests and
Demonstration; A6 - Promotion and Dissemination of results. It is expected, at the end of the project, to demonstrate and validate the results of the project regarding
the use cases to be specified. |