Futuristic railway condition monitoring system

Conclusion In this paper, we have briefly introduced the principle of operation of various types of photonic distributed sensors and outlined the advantages of using fibre Bragg grating sensor arrays for railway applications. Some preliminary results obtained from field measurement over the past few years in collaboration with the local railway corporations are also presented. The measurement results together with the experiences gained from these projects demonstrated that distributed photonic sensor based on fibre Bragg gratings (FBGs) is an excellent candidate for the realization of smart condition monitoring systems for the railway industry. Two commercial systems, one installed on rail tracks (for the detection of wheel/rail interface response) and one installed on board of trains together with a thermal condition monitoring system, have indeed been developed and are now being used by the local railway industry. The Polytechnic University is also striving to use our local experiences as the reference to promote the systems being developed to reputable railway operators/consultants in other parts of the world.