Creep force estimation at the wheel-rail interface

The railway industry in the UK is currently expanding the use of condition monitoring of railway vehicles. These systems can be used to improve maintenance procedures or could potentially be used to monitor current vehicle running conditions without the use of cost prohibitive sensors. This paper looks at a proposed method for the online estimation of creep forces in the wheel/rail contact that utilises a set of modest cost sensors and Kalman-Bucy filtering. Interpretation of these creep forces could be used for many applications but in particular the detection of areas of low adhesion.