Benchmarking the Adaptive Wheel Slide Protection

Abstract

With the ever-increasing railway traffic on existing lines railway operators are requesting means to increase line capacity, operational resiliency and lower Life Cycle Costs. WSP systems integrated in railway vehicles can address the three aspects. Indeed, a shorter braking distance in low wheel/rail adhesion conditions can increase the line capacity by allowing the vehicles to safely travel closer to each other. Furthermore, WSP systems with better performing algorithms in very and extremely low wheel/rail adhesion conditions would lead to less wheel locks and lower wheel slide velocities diminishing the number of wheel flats and overall wheel damage, thereby reducing the LCC. The increased performance in these conditions would also lead to an increased resiliency to environmental conditions. As a follow-up to the work presented in the paper entitled “ADAPTIVE WHEEL SLIDE PROTECTION ALGORITHMS” - EB2019-IBC-010, a two-point investigation is led to evaluate how the A-WSP addresses the railway operators needs. The first investigation will quantify the differences in terms of braking distance and air consumption between a WSP device incorporating a traditional WSP algorithm and a WSP device incorporating an adaptive WSP algorithm. The second investigation will quantify differences in terms of wheel flats and wheel damage between a WSP device incorporating a traditional WSP algorithm and a WSP device using an adaptive WSP algorithm, The quantification of both investigations will be done at least according to EN15595:2018 criteria and could be extended if these do not provide a holistic view of the differences. The quantification will be based on the analysis of test results from a hardware in the loop test bench and on test results from the Multi-axle Roller Rig present in Wabtec’s laboratory.In order to produce a realistic output, the hardware in the loop test bench and the Multi-axle Roller Rig will be configured according to the characteristics of an existing vehicle and subjected to a real mission profile including the most critical situation identified by railway operators.