Railway monitoring

Railway Monitoring
Structural Health Monitoring

Next Industries / Smart IoT applications / Structural Health Monitoring / Railway monitoring

Optimizing the need to repair to minimize downtime, making transportation more efficient

Railway Monitoring is included in the more general Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and includes both typical parameters of structural deterioration (stress state, inclination, displacements, deformation, torsion, cracks/breaks in tracks, deterioration) and particular parameters to monitor tracks height difference, track twisting, oscillations, vertical movements of the track, railway track corrugation.

But to be a 360-degrees service, it can be extended to both external environmental parameters (wind, temperature, humidity) and geotechnical measurements (landslides, groundwater pressure, water level, ground settlements).

Benefits

to reduce maintenance and operations costs
to reduce the risk of structural collapses
to automatize data reading and collection
to improve safety in structures, rails

Geotechnical know how to increase passengers' safety

Railway monitoring systems consist of structural and geotechnical monitoring systems, with different instrumentation. Monitoring systems are to be installed in advance in order to acquire the necessary variations produced by seasonal and daily thermal cycles and to keep under control the damage already present and the possible unfavorable evolutions of the mechanisms activated or to be activated.
Railway monitoring systems are commonly composed of sensors, data acquisition systems (data logger), data transfer systems, data management systems and data analysis.

Why choosing an IoT system for railways monitoring

The analysis of collected data can quickly provide essential information for the correct interpretation of the structural and environmental general status and threshold alarms, allowing to better plan operations and reduce non-accessible time for maintenance.
IoT technology is ideal for this type of applications, where large volumes of digital data must be managed and it possible to access, collect, and analyze data real time and remotely, i.e., without being present on site or on places with limited or harsh access to perform field inspections with human workers in the loop.