World’s first optical fibre sensing system for railway monitoring
A team led by Prof. Tam Hwa-yaw, Associate Director of the Photonics Research Institute (PRI), has developed the world’s first integrated optical fiberbased railway monitoring system. The system enables railways operators in Hong Kong and Singapore to switch from costly and unreliable scheduled maintenance to acondition-based, predictive approach. Five Smart Railway systems (SRS) and two Train Track Condition Monitoring(TTCM) systems have been adopted by railway operators in Hong Kong and Singapore, respectively, to monitor the condition of trains and tracks continuously, ensuring that the railway lines are in good operating condition.
Condition-based maintenance is a real-time monitoring strategy that is much more cost-effective and efficient than traditional scheduled maintenance because it “does only what is needed, not what is scheduled”.
This innovative approach comprises an optical fibre sensing network installed on rail tracks to monitor the health of trains traveling on the tracks. Another sensing network is installed on in-service trains to continuously monitor the condition of the tracks, overhead lines, and train structures. An important feature of this approach is that the two sub-systems countercheck each other to safeguard the proper functioning of the sub-systems and ensure the reliability of the measured data. All sensors in the two sub-systems use laser light and are resistant to electromagnetic interference, thus providing much higherquality data than traditional sensors.
The system incorporates the use of big data analytics and machine-learning techniques to produce a large amount of high-quality measurement data from the critical components of trains and tracks, thus providing useful information about their condition. The team has been working closely with railway operators for over 15 years to develop the Health Index (HI) of trains and tracks. HI uses traffic light colours to indicate whether the condition of trains and tracks is good, deteriorating or bad. This allows the operators to easily identify the condition of various critical components and accurately predict the arrival times of trains.
The SRS systems are being used by the Mass Transit Railway Corporation (MTR) to monitor trains running along five metro lines. Meanwhile, the TTCM systems were installed and are operating on the two oldest metro lines in Singapore. These systems help reduce the cost of maintenance and enhance the safety and reliability of the railway lines.
The invention received the 2014 Berthold Leibinger Innovationpreis Prize, a prestigious award presented by the Federal Minister of Education and Research in Germany.
Prof. Tam Hwa-yaw, Associate Director of the Photonics Research Institute (PRI)
Computer user interface for the train-based track condition monitoring system
Computer user interface for the train-based track condition monitoring system
Recipient of the 2014 Berthold Leibinger Innovationpreis Prize
