Track Buckle monitoring

The onset of hot weather brings with it the risk of track buckling if high rail temperatures are combined with deficiencies within the track system (i.e., incorrect rail stress, disturbed / deficient ballast, lateral alignment faults, incorrect rail joint gaps, etc.). Ideally, all such deficiencies should be eliminated before the hot weather season starts. As air temperatures increase during periods of hot weather, rail temperatures also increase. Metals expand and contract as the temperature changes.

If a length of steel rail is rigidly clamped at both ends and then heated, the metal expands and is put under compression until the force becomes too great and exceeds the track systems lateral resistance forces. At this point, the rail bends or buckles sideways.

“During the calendar year 2020, over 1600 standards jobs were raised nationwide for the deployment of a track hot weather watchperson, totaling 23,800 hours of planned inspection time. Although data is not available, it is reasonable to assume that a large proportion of watchperson inspections were undertaken using red zone protection.” - Network Rail

RailGuard is monitoring the core rail temperature in real time and at the same time the ambient temperature. This data is feed into our Machine Learning algorithm that is predicting the temperature in the rails in days ahead and alert the rail operation department in time.

Predictive Maintenance for railroads based on Industrial Internet of Things also known as IIOT is next generation surveillance and monitoring systems for the rail road industry.

RailGuard helps railroad and rail operators by delivering real-time data on telemetry that would otherwise be obtained manually by having people on the tracks, disrupting the time schedules and costing the rail operators a lot on money every year in lost revenue.