New Delhi: In a bid to ensure the safety of the trains as well as the passengers, Indian Railways are strategically installing Hot Axle Box Detector (HABD) sensor-based device to monitor train wheels, axles and brakes to identify any flaws due to overheating, a senior railway official told ETV Bharat.
Disclosing details of the HABD device, Captain Shashi Kiran, Chief Public Relations Officer (CPRO), North Western Railway, told ETV Bharat, “This HABD device will monitor train’s wheels, axles and brakes to identify any flaws during the rail operation, which will help to avoid train derailment and fire incident due to suddenly applying brakes or overheating.”
These HABDs are designed to detect instances of hot axles in running trains and generate an alert if bearing temperature is measured above 70 degrees C/80 degrees C (for coach and goods stock respectively) or the difference between bearing temperatures on both sides of the same axle is above 20 degrees C/25 degree C (for coach and goods stock respectively).
“Beep will sound and a red alert will appear on the screen at the concerned CCR/ Control Office. Action is taken accordingly by the Control Office,” the CPRO said.
HABDs are installed at the train axle box level so that they can check the temperature of both near and far axles and hot wheel detectors are established at the track level to get the wheel temperature. Several times it has been noticed that the axle becomes hot when the temperature of the axle increases due to the constant movement of the wheels. Overheating causes serious rail incidents, including derailment and fire, but this device helps to diagnose problems early on and allows for timely preventive measures to be taken.
The device consists of a rectangular inductive proximity sensor, which detects approaching trains and counts the axles passed. It also has a Non-Contact IR-based temperature sensor having measuring capability even at high speeds 110 kilometres per hour, which measures the temperature of each axle. After that, the Intelligent Field data processing unit captures data from axle counters and temperature sensors, processes it and sends it to the server.
“The real-time software processes the recorded data and generates reports with axle-wise temperature information and transmits the data to the cloud server. The centralised cloud server stores, processes and manages the data, and controls user interfaces and process management. Users can configure the system through the Control Centre Display Interface like setting threshold limits and alarm limits,” Shashi Kiran explained.
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