The importance of condition monitoring in providing fault-free infrastructure

摘要

Many approaches to railway privatisation around the world have seen the commercial separation of the vehicle from the infrastructure. Whilst this forms a convenient administrative boundary there is no escaping the engineering interaction betweenthe two. The poor condition of one element can directly cause significant exceptional costs to be incurred by the other. In circumstances where the condition of another company's assets can have such a significant affect on your own costs how can this beeffectively managed? One answer lies in the use of equipment designed specifically for asset condition monitoring and protection.AEA Technology Rail has been involved in condition monitoring in the UK railway industry for over twenty years, producing systems that cover both infrastructure and vehicles. Since UK railway privatisation the importance of managing thevehicle-infrastructure contractual interface has increased significantly. This has resulted in a huge demand for suitable monitoring systems, often requiring the development of new technology.This paper describes some of the systems presently being used in parts of the UK railway and overseas that offer significant potential for improving infrastructure fault prognosis and prevention. In particular systems that cover the wheel-rail andpantograph-overhead line interfaces are described.