Development and testing of health monitoring of the bearings of traction system of a regional train locomotive during commercial service

This paper presents the results of a research project in which special methods were developed and successfully applied for the health monitoring of the bearings of the traction system of rolling stocks. A prototype monitoring system was developed by the authors and installed on an Italian E464 locomotive. This regional train locomotive class is not equipped by any monitoring system for the bearings of the traction system. The locomotive has been monitored for about three years of service, during which it has undergone to a major maintenance and all the bearings of the traction system has been replaced. This allowed to examine them and to assess if damage indexes corresponded to actual faults. A huge amount of data, in commercial service, has been collected and it was possible to assess that the overall system cannot be considered as in stationary operation, neither when the train speed is constant nor when the same track is travelled.