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 sensing units disposed on the railcar, each of said sensing units comprising;
one or more sensors, said sensors measuring parameters relevant to the operating performance of said railcar, wherein at least one of said one or more sensors is a temperature sensor;
a computational element disposed on said sensing unit programmed to analyze said measured parameters to detect indications of faults or impending failures; and
a communication element disposed on said sensing unit for transmitting data, wherein said communication element is normally in a passive, low-power state, but is powered on;
periodically, to report that said sensing units is operational;
orwhen said computational element has detected an indication of a fault or impending failure;
a data control unit, mounted on said railcar, for receiving data transmitted from one or more of said sensing units, for analyzing said data, and for selectively communicating said data to a receiver located at a location remote from said railcar;
wherein said data control unit also contains a computational element; and
a logical inference engine, said logical inference engine deriving inferences regarding the status of said railcar based on data collected by a plurality of sensors located on a plurality of sensing units.
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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.
16 Citations
16 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 sensing units disposed on the railcar, each of said sensing units comprising; one or more sensors, said sensors measuring parameters relevant to the operating performance of said railcar, wherein at least one of said one or more sensors is a temperature sensor; a computational element disposed on said sensing unit programmed to analyze said measured parameters to detect indications of faults or impending failures; and a communication element disposed on said sensing unit for transmitting data, wherein said communication element is normally in a passive, low-power state, but is powered on; periodically, to report that said sensing units is operational;
orwhen said computational element has detected an indication of a fault or impending failure; a data control unit, mounted on said railcar, for receiving data transmitted from one or more of said sensing units, for analyzing said data, and for selectively communicating said data to a receiver located at a location remote from said railcar; wherein said data control unit also contains a computational element; and a logical inference engine, said logical inference engine deriving inferences regarding the status of said railcar based on data collected by a plurality of sensors located on a plurality of sensing units. - View Dependent Claims (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15)
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16. 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 sensing units disposed on the railcar, each of said sensing units comprising; one or more sensors, said sensors measuring parameters relevant to the operating performance of said railcar, wherein at least one of said one or more sensors is a temperature sensor; a computational element disposed on said sensing unit programmed to analyze said measured parameters to detect indications of faults or impending failures; and a communication element disposed on said sensing unit for transmitting data, wherein said communication element is normally in a passive, low-power state, but is powered on; periodically, to report that said sensing units is operational;
or when said computational element has detected an indication of a fault or impending failure;a data control unit, mounted on said railcar, for receiving data transmitted from one or more of said sensing units, for analyzing said data, and for selectively communicating said data to a remote receiver; wherein said data control unit programs said computational element on each of said sensing units to control (i) the sampling frequency for each sensor associated with said sensing units; (ii) the periodicity of sampling for each sensor associated with said sensing units; and (iii) how often collected data should be transmitted via said communications element to said data control unit.
Specification