Sensonic GmbH has made its name in the railway industry as a highly versatile provider of actionable real-time information arising out of monitoring railway assets. At InnoTrans 2022, the company introduces a new offer to utilise its technology for targeted inspection. In regularly generated reports, changes in the vibration of track infrastructures will be spotlighted. These changes indicate degradation and defects at a very early stage.

Thereby, these reports help to establish practices and processes that will empower effective Condition Based Maintenance along entire networks. Ultimately, this will lead to greater cost savings and to enhanced track availability and safety. 

After a break of four years, InnoTrans 2022 will put a spotlight on every attending company’s status – what is Sensonic’s position to go there?

Since Sensonic’s inception, this is the first InnoTrans for us to showcase our capabilities and developments – we could not be more excited to be in Berlin! This excitement is further highlighted as we are in a phase of our organisational development where we can go to market with proven technology. Throughout the last years, we have established our global position as a pioneer in using Fiber Optic Sensing (FOS) on railways by improving our data offer continuously based on our field experience. As a data company, we have strengthened our core competency, which is the development of intelligent algorithms to automatically interpret the data stream we’re generating with our solution. This is 100% focused on railway applications and monitoring the fiber optic infrastructure. Now we have reached the point where all this flows together – and we have developed a product which is ready to revolutionise the way in which decisions are made in the railway industry. 

Why do you consider FOS as the technology that will empower this revolution?

First of all: Using vibration is the most sensitive monitoring method, especially in mechanical systems like wheel-to-rail interaction. Changes in vibrations are the best and earliest indication for degradation, long before you can recognise changes visually. Based on FOS, or more precisely Distributed Acoustic Sensing DAS, the entire rail network can be monitored comprehensively at any time – and in a pretty simple way. By means of an intelligent edge device, we transform existing telecommunication networks, i.e., optical fibers, into a distributed sensor and thus generate a digital twin of all vibrations along the infrastructure. We call this ‘smart wayside sensing’, as no additional systems or components are needed on the train or on the track. With continuously improving AI models, we interpret these vibrations and provide an unprecedented set of information on train localisation, changes in the condition of the infrastructure or spontaneous events such as activities near the track or natural hazards. And this is why FOS is so promising: There is no other technology that can provide such a holistic picture of activity in real time 24/7 and which allows to match live data with historical data to derive forecasts by introducing a digital twin. So, I am fully convinced, that FOS in general will become an indispensable concept in digitalising railways. The immense variety of information that can be generated by a FOS-based solution is still overwhelming. There are many use cases that may be targeted in time. However, we are focusing on those that will have the biggest impact to start with for ease of adoption by the railroads.

Which use cases are these? 

Our focus is on track maintenance applications. The signatures emitted by the wheel-to-rail interaction, which we are constantly monitoring, are hosting huge amounts of data that can give insights into the track condition – be it for example in terms of the track bed and sleepers, or the rail itself. Up to now, we have proven the Sensonic Solution’s capability to identify a broad range of condition changes in real time, which corroborated to a vast variety of actionable information about defects after inspection of them on-site. For the customers to benefit, we need them to participate in a collaborative effort with us to understand the technology and work with us to optimise it for their usage. As our customer base is seeing the benefits and is able to make process changes, we find that this path eases up. 

How can your customers benefit from this solution?

Sensonic provides their customers with tailored reports, including heatmaps that indicate track degradation in order to enable targeted inspections and condition based maintenance.

What is the content of such a report?

The core information is a so-called track vibrations heatmap. It indicates the change of vibration over time along a monitored section. Thus, such a heatmap allows to directly identify track degradation points and provides the end user with, in essence, an accurate location and magnitude of vibrational change. These reports also include tables of positions with a certain rate of changes. This overview additionally supports in defining which locations should be inspected immediately, which ones should be focussed during the next planned inspection cycles or which positions should be monitored over a longer period of time.

In total, the information in these reports allows the maintenance teams to plan and execute activities based on changes of the track condition, even at an early stage. That said, this approach helps to set maintenance measures, before small anomalies evolve into bigger or critical defects. Targeted inspections in time help to avoid expensive repairs and to increase network availability and safety significantly. The experiences in various installations over the last half year absolutely confirm the power of the track vibration heatmaps.

To sum it up: By creating these reports, our solution provides continuously updated information about the infrastructure health and empowers effective condition based maintenance along the whole network. Furthermore, it also offers the possibility to check whether executed corrective measures were successful and have led to a smooth wheel-to-rail interaction again.

What can be expected next?

Soon we will provide a mobile app to support the work order process and especially the track workers on site. This app will guide them to the identified locations, provide them with all relevant information during their inspection or maintenance activities and allowathem to annotate and categorise defects and to upload pictures. This information will be synchronised with our intuitive dashboard, which allows to generate reports on demand, to dive deeper into the data, take traffic data into consideration or to set thresholds for warning or alarming on certain levels of vibration changes. And for sure, all actionable information can be easily integrated into maintenance or asset management platforms via API.

Are there other parts of the solution that can provide the user with information right away?

So far, we have identified more than 70 use cases for which our solution can generate actionable information. As you can imagine, the start of a 1000-mile journey begins with the first step – or first steps, as in our case. For sure, continuous track monitoring is just one part of the whole puzzle. Our focus, experience and solutions primarily revolve around the wheel-to-rail interaction. However, we have other applications that we can offer at the present time frame. Landslide detection, for example, or monitoring of telecom infrastructure and security. Of course, considering the effort and time it takes to develop fully functional algorithms, we are always on the lookout for compelling cases both from the view of customer importance and also from our point of view of scalability, before addressing these.

What train-related information can your solution generate? 

Similar to condition monitoring information, train-related information is something that a FOS-based solution collects frequently, by its nature. Every rail vehicle emits vibrations and can therefore be detected by the Sensonic Solution. Information we can derive from these digital twins of trains ranges from key facts like train length, speed, direction to calculations like ETE or ETA, which are relevant for exact platform announcements, for example. For the moment, the focus was on developing track condition monitoring algorithms, but these train-related outputs can surely be developed further soon. 

Can you name any examples of where your solution is in use already? 

In fact, there are various installations all over the globe, where various stakeholders like maintenance teams, traffic managers or security staff already receive information from our solution. Customers range from huge industrial lines in South America to railway operators and system integrators in Europe as well as major players in Asia. As mentioned, the use cases applied in these projects are mainly focusing on track condition monitoring – but we have also generated data for a project to increase the accuracy of platform announcements in Germany, for example. 

So, you’re open to any projects to come?

Definitely – we are ready for all projects that fall in the realm of our present and future offerings. The Sensonic Solution is ready to go into the field, wherever on the globe. The implementation of targeted inspection and condition based maintenance strategies can be supported right away, while other use cases can be developed and customised further together. Each case will require a base of solid collaboration to provide railway operators, maintenance teams and security staff with highly valuable and actionable information for whatever use case they have.

We can discuss this together at any time – either by getting in touch via www.sensonic.com or at the InnoTrans in Berlin – see you there, Booth 280, Hall 27. 

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