LOCATE

Project description

The LOCATE project will develop a set of tools to access the condition of freight locomotive bogies to implement a condition-based maintenance program.

It is the goal of LOCATE to contribute to an optimization of the availability of rolling stock, the quality of service, maintenance costs and return of investment.

Project objectives

The main objective of the LOCATE project is to replace as necessary as possible the preventive conditional or scheduled maintenance of mechanical parts of the bogie by predictive maintenance.

This goal will be achieved by overcoming some of the historical challenges of maintenance subject, by:

• Developing optimized condition-based maintenance strategies using dynamic tools locating and evaluating the impact on the such overall approach of CBM in maintenance planning and railway operations;
• Developing intelligent tools integrated for the operation of the overall maintenance policy: supporting localization of faulty components, maintenance scheduling and integrating maintenance operations tasks into daily services, while ensuring appropriate inventory control of stock and spare parts and assigning maintenance crew/ technicians according to their skills/competences;
• Testing and validating in practice an open architecture able to carry asset management data to the operator beyond the locomotive bogie, locating events and defects on freight wagons, track condition, etc.
• Developing a minimal digital twin for the bogie system, based on vehicle dynamic simulations and post-processing, while considering the local requirements of the system. In this way, providing a comprehensive methodology to derive minimal digital twins of complex mechatronic railway systems;
• Applying a cost-effective and reliability-based sensor design to locate defects and monitor structural integrity of critical and high cost components of the bogie following an in-depth analysis of freight-specific use cases;
• Improving overall competitiveness of freight rail transport, increasing the freight reliability and availability, and providing a shift from inspection activities and associated costs to cost-effective remote defect localization and monitoring solutions.

Project structure

WP1 Management: Evoleo Technologies LDA
WP2 Requirements and Specifications: Evoleo Technologies LDA
WP3 Measured Behavior: Vibratec
WP4 Reference Behavior: Instituto superior tecnico (IST)
WP5 Operational Behavior: University of Huddersfield
WP6 Integration and Testing: Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat de Catalunya (FGC)
WP7 Dissemination and Exploitation: Union internationale des chemins de fer (UIC)

Project consortium