New condition monitoring techniques for vehicle suspensions

Abstract

This paper presents two simple and potentially powerful approaches for the condition monitoring of rail vehicle suspensions, which explore the relative changes between different dynamic motions caused by suspension faults. Damper failures in vertical (primary) suspensions of a conventional bogie are detected based on the measurements of the bounce, pitch and roll accelerations of the bogie frame. The effectiveness of the proposed fault detection methods is demonstrated. (6 pages)