Railroad train monitoring system
First Claim
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1. A monitoring system for monitoring performance criteria of a railcar, said railcar including a car body and a plurality of trucks each carrying one or more wheel sets mounted on said railcar, comprising:
- one or more elastomeric pads disposed between each wheel set and its corresponding truck;
one or more sensors disposed on one or more of said pads, said sensors measuring parameters relevant to the operating performance of said railcar;
a computational element disposed on one or more of said pads programmed to control the periodicity and sampling frequency of readings from said one or more sensors and for performing an analysis of data gathered via said readings;
a communication element disposed on one or more of said pads for transmitting data selected as a result of said analysis; and
wherein said one or more pads are in direct communication with one or more other of said pads and further wherein data transmitted by any one of said pads may be relayed by another of said pads to a receiver.
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Abstract
Railcar monitoring utilizes instrumented, flexible pads supported within the truck pedestal jaws on the bearing adapters. The pads contain sensors for monitoring temperature pressure, shifting loads, truck hunting and the like and have circuitry for processing information received from the sensors and for processing and reporting departures of performance variables to a remote source. The system cyclically activates polling each pad on a car and communicates signals of critical departures and car identity to a remote source.
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Citations
19 Claims
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1. A monitoring system for monitoring performance criteria of a railcar, said railcar including a car body and a plurality of trucks each carrying one or more wheel sets mounted on said railcar, comprising:
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one or more elastomeric pads disposed between each wheel set and its corresponding truck; one or more sensors disposed on one or more of said pads, said sensors measuring parameters relevant to the operating performance of said railcar; a computational element disposed on one or more of said pads programmed to control the periodicity and sampling frequency of readings from said one or more sensors and for performing an analysis of data gathered via said readings; a communication element disposed on one or more of said pads for transmitting data selected as a result of said analysis; and wherein said one or more pads are in direct communication with one or more other of said pads and further wherein data transmitted by any one of said pads may be relayed by another of said pads to a receiver. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16)
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17. A method of monitoring performance of interconnected mobile units having bodies supported by wheels, wherein one of said mobile units is a controllable prime mover and the remainder of said units are interconnected to said prime mover, said method comprising:
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providing interfacing pads between the wheels and the bodies of the mobile units, said pads having embedded sensors for measuring operational parameters of said mobile units, said pads being programmable to control the sampling frequency for each sensor and the periodicity of sampling for each of said sensors; and providing, on said pads, a computational capability for evaluating said measured operational parameters, and for identifying performance behavior derived from said measured operational parameters considered to be outside of a normal operating range; and communicating to a single location messages identifying the performance behavior to be outside of a normal operating range. - View Dependent Claims (18, 19)
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Specification