In-Situ Guided-Wave-Based Health Monitoring for Train Bogie Structures: Technique Development and Application to Beijing-Shanghai High-Speed Railway

Abstract

An in-situ online health diagnosis and prognosis system (OH-DPS) for train bogie structures was developed. The system, residing on a PXI platform, was recently installed on China’s latest high-speed train model CRH380CL. An active piezoelectric sensor network was permanently attached to the bogie frame of the train to actively actuate and receive ultrasonic guided waves. A mass of signals acquired via the system was processed, from which a wide array of signal features was extracted and fused by the built-in program, to monitor the health status of the bogie in a real-time fashion. During the train’s conformance testing on the BeijingShanghai High-Speed Railway, continuous health monitoring of the bogie frame was carried out, covering a variety of events including departure, speed-up, full speed operation (300 km/h), emergency brake, track change, and stop. Mock-up damage added to the bogie’s side panel was successfully located by the system during the operation, and the detection results were visualized in a rapid manner through a diagnostic imaging algorithm. The in-situ experiment has evidently demonstrated the feasibility, practicality, effectiveness and accuracy of guided-wave-based health monitoring for high-speed train bogies under real-world working conditions.