Preventing hot bearing derailments via wireless onboard condition monitoring

The 2023 train derailment that occurred in East Palestine, OH, brought attention to the limitations of the detectors currently used in the industry. Typically, the health of train bearings is monitored intermittently through wayside temperature detection systems that can be as far as 40 miles apart. Nonetheless, catastrophic bearing failure is often sudden and develops rapidly. Current wayside detection systems are reactive in nature and depend on significant temperature increases above ambient, which, when detected, train operators have little time to react before a derailment occurs, as it did in East Palestine, OH. Multiple comprehensive studies have shown that the temperature difference between healthy and faulty bearings is not statistically meaningful until the onset of catastrophic failure. Thus, temperature alone is an insufficient metric for health monitoring. Over the past two decades, we have demonstrated vibration-based solutions for wireless onboard condition monitoring of train components to address this problem. Early stages of bearing failure are reliably detected via vibrations and acoustics signatures, which can also be used to determine the severity and location of failure. This talk will describe our work to develop and further these new methods and technologies for the rail industry as well as the impact of this research program on the training of hundreds of engineers from underrepresented backgrounds.