Definition of Damage Indices for Railway Axle Bearings: Results of Long-Lasting Tests

Abstract

The European Rail Transport System has set goals of improving the reliability, availability, durability, high-speed capacity, and maintenance. In this context, the condition monitoring approach is of fundamental importance for all components of the “train” system. The authors have long been in the diagnostics of the railway traction system, with a focus on rolling element bearings. In this paper, signal processing techniques, already developed in the past and experimentally validated in the railway field, are applied to vibration data for the definition of damage indices for railway axle bearings. This allows to evaluate the “status” of the bearing and the monitoring of the evolution of any damage that may occur. The experimental data were obtained by means of a test-rig built according to EN 12082:2017 and following the test specifications of the same standard.

A Survey on Fault Diagnosis Approaches for Rolling Bearings of Railway Vehicles

“…With the development of the railway industry, the railway passenger and freight volume maintained a continuous growth trend. Based on the speed increase of railway vehicles and the construction of the transportation networks, various types of trains kept the high-frequency operation, which has brought increasingly prominent operational safety issues [1]. As one of the most important components in the train bogie machinery equipment, the rolling bearings have the function of bearing and transmitting loads, whose categories mainly include axle box bearings, traction motor bearings, and gearbox bearings.…”

Italian Advances on MMS

“…In Reference [10], the authors show the results of long-lasting tests aimed at supporting and validating the definition of damage indices for railway axle bearing.…”