Laser wheel and bogie measurements

The system has been designed to be installed at the entrance to the depot for the automatic non-contact measurement of bogies, as well as wheel profile and diameter of coaches moving at speeds of up to 20 km/h. The system is suitable for operating at temperatures from -30 to +60°C, with humidity of up to 98%. The measurement procedure is fully automatic and does not call for any operator involvement.

System layout

All measurement modules of the system are fixed to the insulated carrying frame. The cameras, along with the lasers are built into the housings into which the conditioned air is continuously blown in to keep them in stable conditions and to protect from dust and water. The measurement cycle starts when the ultrasound barrier detects the train, from then on all successive axles are detected by axle sensors.

The particular coaches are identified using the RF/ID technique, so all measurement readings can be assigned to particular wheels for further analysis and reporting.

The system consists of three main subsystems: wheel profile measurement, wheel diameter measurement, bogie geometry measurement. All measurement data is sent to the respective measurement computer and after processing the wheel data is sent to the local database. The measurement computers with the QNX real time operating system are autonomous and may operate independently from the host computer. Once the host computer is switched on all data from the local system database is automatically sent to the main MS SQL database on the host computer running under MS Windows. System like that has been installed in Warsaw, Poland, for InterCity fast train operator.

System structure

The wheel measurement database has built in reporting features making it possible to produce tabular and graphical printouts. The measurement results for coaches are stored in the databases which makes control possible of the progressing degradation of the wheel profile. Relevant reports are shown below. These reports are used for planning of repairs of coaches. For those coaches which do not have the RF/ID tags alarm signals are generated when the wheel is detected with the excessive profile wear parameter value.

Wheel profile degradation visualised using measurement results from the system database (example from the InterCity coach - Poland)

Product leaflet
(PDF file - 674 KB)

Additional reading