Track monitoring equipment

• US 20040173033A1
• Filed: 12/11/2003
• Published: 09/09/2004
• Est. Priority Date: 07/07/2001
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Deltarail Group Limited
• Original Assignee: Deltarail Group Limited
• Inventors: Gilbert, David
• Granted Patent: US 7,081,824 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 73/862
• CPC Class Codes: B61K 9/08 Measuring installations for surveying permanent way applications of measuring apparatus or devices for track building purposes E01B35/00; measuring techniques G01

Abstract

The alignment of railway tracks may be monitored using an accelerometer (36) mounted on a bogie (24) of a railway vehicle to detect lateral accelerations, and a displacement transducer (38) to monitor the lateral displacements of a wheelset (27) relative to the bogie. The acceleration signals are digitised, and processed corresponding to double integration, so as to deduce the lateral displacements of the bogie, and in conjunction with the signals from the displacement transducer hence to determine the effective lateral displacements of the track. This can provide a more useful indication of the lateral positions of the rails than measurements of the gauge faces. Such equipment (16) may be installed in a service vehicle, and operate automatically, downloading resulting data to a remote base station at regular intervals.

Claims

1. Equipment for monitoring alignment of railway tracks (35), the equipment comprising sensors including at least one accelerometer (36) mounted on a bogie (25) of a railway vehicle (18), the accelerometer being arranged to detect lateral accelerations, and a displacement transducer (38) arranged to monitor the lateral displacements of a wheelset (27) of the bogie relative to the bogie (25), means (40) to digitise signals from the accelerometer and from the displacement transducer, and a computer (40) arranged to process the digitised signals, the process corresponding to double integration, so as to deduce the lateral displacements of the bogie (25), and in conjunction with the signals from the displacement transducer (38) hence to determine the effective lateral displacements (d) of the track (35).

2. Equipment as claimed in claim 1 also comprising a position locating instrument (44) arranged to provide position information to the computer (40), and automatic means (46) for transferring data from the computer (40) to a base station (10) remotely and at intervals.

3. Equipment as claimed in claim 1 or claim 2 installed on a secvice vehicle (18).

4. Equipment as claimed in any one of the preceding claims wherein the displacement transducer is a non-contact transducer.

5. Equipment as claimed in claim 4 in which the displacement transducer is an inductance sensor.