Engineering Commons^™

Estimating The Inner Ring Defect Size And Residual Service Life Of Freight Railcar Bearings Using Vibration Signatures, Jennifer Lima, Constantine Tarawneh, Jesse Aguilera, Jonas Cuanang

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

There are currently two primary wayside detection systems for monitoring the health of freight railcar bearings in the railroad industry: The Trackside Acoustic Detection System (TADS™) and the wayside Hot-Box Detector (HBD). TADS™ uses wayside microphones to detect and alert the train operator of high-risk defects. However, many defective bearings may never be detected by TADS™ since a high-risk defect is a spall which spans about 90% of a bearing’s raceway, and there are less than 30 systems in operation throughout the United States and Canada. HBDs sit on the side of the rail-tracks and use non-contact infrared sensors to …