There are multiple infrastructure-related safety and maintenance challenges that could be solved or mitigated through the deployment of wireless and embedded sensors. &nbsp;The University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign aims to address these challenges as a part of an FRA-funded project titled Wireless Continuous Monitoring of Track Condition and Stress State Exception Reporting.&nbsp; The project, also referred to as “Smart Track,” has as its primary goal to improve the rail industry’s ability to answer critical safety and maintenance related questions associated to the track infrastructure by monitoring and predicting track health. &nbsp;Using a wireless approach to gather data, in conjunction with sensing technologies that are self-enunciating, the project aims to create a reliable structure for the industry to better track safety-critical track health items and also improve their prioritization of track maintenance activities. &nbsp;The efficient and effective implementation of smart monitoring technologies requires prioritization of track inspection needs. &nbsp;To improve safety, a risk-based analysis of North American track-caused accidents was carried out using FRA accident data from the period of 1996 to 2018. &nbsp;The top five most frequent accident causes were Wide gauge due to defective crossties (1st), Switch point wear and breakage (2nd), Broken rail due to both detail fracture from shelling or head check (3rd), Transverse/compound fracture (4th) and Defective fasteners (5th). &nbsp;Additionally, to provide more guidance on the rail industry’s track inspection needs, a survey was distributed to a wide variety of railroad professionals in the public and private sectors. &nbsp;A total of 50 individual responses from 33 unique organizations were obtained.&nbsp; From the survey it can be inferred that Rail, Special Trackwork, and Bridges are the track components/locations of most interest for monitoring. &nbsp;Combining the data obtained it was possible to develop a prioritization strategy with specific track structure locations, required measurements, and desired output.&nbsp; This presentation provides an overview of FRA accident data analysis, a review of industry survey results, and presents a vision for specific track elements that are in greatest need of wireless instrumentation and data reporting.&nbsp; In the future, field demonstrations of Smart Track will be carried out based on these priorities.

Prioritization of Focus Areas - Wireless Continuous Monitoring of Track Condition and Stress State Exception Reporting

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/JRC/JRC2021/volume/84775

2021 Joint Rail Conference (JRC2021)

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