Detecting train driveshaft damages using accelerometer signals and Differential Convolutional Neural Networks Articles uri icon

authors

publication date

  • November 2023

volume

  • 126

International Standard Serial Number (ISSN)

  • 0952-1976

Electronic International Standard Serial Number (EISSN)

  • 1873-6769

abstract

  • Maintaining railway axles is crucial to prevent catastrophic failures and enormous human and economic costs. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the railway industry to adopt condition monitoring techniques to enhance the safety and efficiency of the rail transport system, which maintenance is currently based on periodic inspections. In this context, this work presents a technique for real-time crack diagnosis on railway axles, based on advanced 2D-Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) architectures applied to time¿frequency representations of vibration signals. One of the critical novelties is introducing a differential CNN structure that captures the system's statistical properties, enabling generalisation between different mechanical sets and conditions. The proposed system has been trained with data corresponding to a unique wheelset assembly, showing that the model is able to diagnose cracks on the three different wheelset tested in operation under 32 different combinations of conditions, such as load, speed, sense of rotation and vibration direction. Four different crack levels have been introduced, representing the maximum one a 0.08% of the axle diameter, and the method proposed achieved Area Under the Curve (AUC) score of 0.85, significantly outperforming results obtained with other architectures proposed in the state-of-the-art, the score of the next below is 0.76. The results demonstrate the effectiveness and practicality of this approach to accurately classify the four crack levels tested within a condition monitoring system for non-stationary conditions, that would enable reliable real-time diagnosis, thus paving the way towards a more robust and efficient railway axle maintenance system.

keywords

  • condition monitoring; convolutional neural networks; crack detection; deep learning; railway axles; vibration signal