The Office of Research and Development of the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) is sponsoring a project to develop and demonstrate an on-board condition monitoring system for freight trains. The objective of the system is to improve railroad safety and efficiency through continuous monitoring of mechanical components in order to detect defects before they cause breakdowns and accidents. The project, which commenced in June 1999, is part of the Rolling Stock Program Element in FRA’s Five-Year Strategic Plan for Railroad Research, Development and Demonstrations [1]. Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC) and Wilcoxon Research (WR) designed and developed a prototype system in 2000. The prototype system was tested during the period Nov. 2000–Nov. 2001 on a vehicle provided by the Research and Tests Department at Norfolk Southern Corporation. A Revenue Service Demonstration is scheduled to commence in October 2003. The monitoring system will be installed on five coal hopper cars and tested in revenue service. Southern Company Service is providing the test cars. The train will operate on a Norfolk Southern line between a coalmine near Berry, AL and an electric power plant, located 35 miles southeast of Birmingham. The demonstration is scheduled to run for six months. The demonstration will showcase some of the latest technologies in wireless communications and railroad bearings. A tri-mode cell telephone will be used for data telemetry between the on-board monitoring system and a web-accessible database. The Timken Company has developed two innovative systems that will be deployed in the demonstration — a permanent magnet generator mounted inside a Class F railroad bearing and bearing health monitoring system featuring temperature and vibration sensors, a tachometer, a micro-controller and an RF transmitter mounted inside a Class F bearing.
This paper is the summary report on work started in 2007, and initially introduced in a presentation at the joint ASME – TTCI Bearing Symposium in Chicago in September of 2007 [1]. The identification of the root cause(s) for “warm bearing trend” temperatures has also been the subject of other technical papers [2, 3]. Traditional railroad journal bearing hot box detector (HBD) systems monitor journal bearing temperatures, and typically provide an alarm based on a measured in-service bearing absolute temperature, or against a programmed “delta” over the ambient temperature level. More recently, bearing operating temperatures have been statistically analyzed for temperature “trending”, and identification of temperature “outliers”, or bearings which display a higher temperature relative to the majority of bearings in the same train. AAR rules now facilitate the removal from service of bearings which either: 1) exceed traditionally defined limits, or 2) meet the statistical criteria set forth by these newly established AAR industry rules, to ideally prevent or eliminate “burn off journals” and potential derailments. This study is focused on testing of railroad journal bearings that were removed from service for “Why Made Code 50” (an “overheated” journal bearing), and exhibited no visually obvious external signs of distress. Dynamic testing and a corresponding tear down investigation to determine the root cause(s) for the elevated temperature was performed for the trend and mate bearings. This dynamic rig testing and corresponding investigation(s) have resulted in the determination of a significant and potential root cause for warm trend bearings.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
customersupport@researchsolutions.com
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.
Copyright © 2025 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.