“Self-collaboration” system—a new concept of on-board fault detection and isolation system for heavy haul wagons

This paper proposes a new concept of an on-board Fault Detection and Isolation (FDI) system with the name of “Self-collaboration” system for heavy haul wagons. In this system, two accelerometers are mounted on each carbody in a heavy haul train. A signal-based FDI method is applied for detecting faults in the suspension system of each wagon. Three Fault Indicators (FIs) are proposed and applied for identifying the occurring vehicle suspension faults. Instead of a time consuming pre-built database, an on-line fault diagnose strategy is proposed. As wagons in a heavy haul train are almost identical, the system can work by comparing wagon pairs, or another wagon in the near vicinity. The “communications” of FIs from one wagon to another in a heavy haul train are conducted for making on-line fault diagnoses. Wedge damper faults are selected in this paper to demonstrate this approach.