Instrumented Revenue Vehicles

For over 20 years, the Monash Institute of Railway Technology has provided innovative strategies for condition monitoring of rollingstock and targeted economical track maintenance planning. Over 100 instrumented revenue vehicles (IRV) have been delivered, providing round the clock monitoring of vehicle and track safety and performance.

The IRV technology utilises existing customer rollingstock which remains in normal revenue service and provides a platform for instrumentation and data collection. The key advantage over traditional track recording equipment, is that it monitors the actual response of the rollingstock in both empty and loaded condition and provides more regular feedback on track condition. The frequency of collection depends on the number of vehicles and route duration and the principal premise is that if the rollingstock is riding poorly, then corrective actions are likely to be required.

The IRV fleet is fully autonomous and designed around the customers' specific operational requirements. Whilst they provide an excellent tool for monitoring track condition and planning track maintenance, the following applications have also proven beneficial to existing customers:

• In-train force monitoring, often used for:
  • Development of improved driving strategies
  • Tuning of indexing cycles during car dumping
  • Assessment of longer trains, or distributed power regimes
  • Development of REPOS tables to allow improved product design
• Wagon structural assessment and monitoring for design confirmation
• Dynamic monitoring to ensure adequate stability according to regulatory standards
• Component strain gauging (e.g. yoke, draft pocket, car body) to allow improved understanding of component behaviour and loading
• Bearing and wheel temperature monitoring to allow hot bearing and hot wheel monitoring sites to be calibrated