Structural health monitoring of composite railway bogie using optical fiber sensor during operation test

초록

Railway bogie consists of a bogie frame, wheel set, axle box, brake system and various electrical equipments, which plays an important role in supporting the load of the railcar body, delivering the force of traction to a train. Recently the fiber reinforced composites are applied to reduce the structural weight and energy consumption [1]. As the evolution of applied material to the bogie, effective health monitoring technology is necessary due to the material non-uniformity and breakage mode complexity. If the axle bearing of the railway bogie is damaged or the grease freezes, the excessive friction between the axle and bearing overheats the axle, which may induce the derailment of the train. In this paper, health monitoring technology using optical fiber sensors such as distributed optical fiber sensor and FBG(fiber Bragg grating) sensor was applied to a developed composite bogie. The structural deformation of the bogie frame manufactured by composite material was monitored on a real time using the distributed optical fiber sensor under the maximum static load. The distributed optical fiber sensor system which has high spatial resolution using Brillouin correlation domain analysis for the monitoring of the distributed strain was developed and used [2]. Also, temperature of the axle box, in which 250μm diameter FBG sensors were embedded, was measured using high speed FGB logger during the operation test.