Technology Digests / Revenue Service Evaluation of In-Track Locomotive Undercarriage Thermal Inspection Systems (LUTIS)

TD22-008

May 1, 2022
Authors
  • Ryan Alishio
  • Matthew Witte
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Key Findings

  • The revenue service trials of the in-track LUTIS demonstrated good correlation between the wayside and on-board temperature measurements, suggesting a strong potential for using thermal scanning technology to monitor major driveline components of locomotives.
  • The two thermal scanning systems detected and measured locomotive component temperatures during the one-year test.
  • The test showed that the LUTIS accurately reported the temperatures of key running gear components. Results from the two systems were within an average of 2°F of each other and within 6°F of onboard sensors.

Revenue Service Evaluation of In-Track Locomotive Undercarriage Thermal Inspection Systems (LUTIS)

In cooperation with the Association of American Railroads’ (AAR) Strategic Research Initiatives (SRI) program, BNSF Railway, and commercial suppliers, MxV Rail (formerly TTCI) participated in and conducted an in-service assessment of locomotive undercarriage thermal inspection systems (LUTIS) also known as “In-Track Thermal Detectors.” Two commercial test systems were installed and tested on the BNSF track near Lenwood, CA. As part of the evaluation, MxV Rail instrumented three BNSF locomotives with onboard thermocouples (TCs) and data loggers to record the real-time temperatures of the major driveline components of the locomotives. The TC data was compared with temperature data from the in-track thermal detectors. Since these systems monitored the same trains in close proximity, results from all systems should be equivalent. The details from this evaluation are described in this Technology Digest BACKGROUND Figure 1.TM failure and teardown showing multiple damages to TM Locomotive traction motor (TM) lockup,…