Nowadays, wheel maintenance is commonly a planned activity (PM) based on visual inspections of the wheel conditions and time/mileage maintenance practices. These intervals are based on earlier experience on rolling stock maintenance or on the supplier’s specifications, referring to overall usage time, distance covered or the amount of operations the systems have been exposed to. Manual inspections are still a useful way to monitor a system, but as the systems get increasingly complex, the need for objective and reliable methods of wheel condition monitoring increases.
At AMINSA, we react to the fact that the European railway industry is already trying to move from this generalized practice nowadays to a condition-based maintenance (CBM). Condition based maintenance using current Wheel Impact Detectors or WIDs monitors the actual condition of the asset but it is still the rolling stock manager who decide which maintenance activities needs to be done when certain indicators show signs of decreasing performance or upcoming failure. However, clients are asking now for more advanced remote wheel condition monitoring systems, that makes possible to prevent damage using a more predictive approach, and that even indicate to the user which are the correct maintenance decisions.
• Rail infrastructure managers (RIMs) want to obtain information about wheel state detection in order to identify those vehicles in poor conditions.
• Train operating companies (TOCs): By following the maintenance advice and indications of DTD SYSTEM (Predictive maintenance plan module), they will be able to perform predictive maintenance operations, leading not only to important maintenance cost savings (and issued penalties due to produced track deterioration) but also to a higher performance of their asset.
As developer of DTD SYSTEM, we aim to commercialise it becoming a technology based service provider to the worldwide railway sector. We will provide the design, installation, data management, analysis and reporting and technical assistance and support for successful operation of DTD SYSTEM in railway networks around the world. With this objective in mind, we will create a new department in the company focused exclusively in this new area of activity.
