Intelligent Rail Summit

NaplesItaly

Maksim Tarabrin
Deputy Director at TVEMA
Speaking on 23 November during the Rail Infrastructure Measuring and Monitoring sessions

maxtarabin

Maksim Tarabrin
Deputy Director
TVEMA

Moving towards higher efficiency of multifunctional measurement vehicles

The questions to be covered during the session:

  • The experience of various railway companies in operating multifunctional diagnostic vehicles.
  • Optimal ways to combine measurement systems on the vehicle.
  • Benefits of renovation of the measurement fleet using the principles of multi-functionality.

Summary

The rapid development of the rail transportation leads to the new issues, related to the maintenance of the infrastructure. The railway operators face the consequences of the growth of the traffic, increase of the operation speeds and axle loads, limiting the network capacity, which can be provided for the maintenance and measurement. However, despite these limitations, this process still should guarantee the safety of transportation and keep the high level of cost efficiency of the expenditures, thus must be itself optimized

Technical progress brings today its achievements to very different areas of railway transport, including diagnostic systems. In second decade of XXI century the measurement equipment includes numerous sensors, installed on special or commercial trains, and processors with the summary throughput way higher than former supercomputers, allowing the railway operators to collect relevant information on most elements of the infrastructure in automatic mode. But does that really help to provide better and more efficient maintenance, and how to minimize the slots, allocated for the measurement fleet?

This report is focused on the recent experience of the railway operators in different parts of the globe in the use of multifunctional measurement vehicles. The examples of several innovation projects will show, unveiling some established myths, the different levels of efficiency in combining different groups of the systems, as well as in the application of various types of the rolling stock for the measurement needs.

Special part of the presentation is devoted to the development strategy of the Infrastructure Direction of Russian Railways (RZD), covering, among other topics, the initiation of the “mixed” way of monitoring. Having a huge (if not the largest in the world) inspection fleet, the company permanently works on the optimizing of the measurement process, applying many innovative technologies and new approaches to the operations. The answer RZD has now is how to perform all types of inspection at most commercial speeds without any extra slots for the measurement vehicles.

The presented projects and approaches show that no methods are universal, and only professional discussions and debates together with all the experience can help to find a proper solution for every single case.


View the topics of discussion and the speakers for each individual theme:

We look forward to welcoming you in Naples between 22 – 24 November for the Intelligent Rail Summit. 

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