Environmentally Sustainable Wireless Track Recording Vehicle Strategy Towards Improving the Safety Standards

Abstract Transportation is an integral part of modern society as it enhances the function of mobility leading to an important measure of a society’s success. Different modes of transport are used worldwide such as cars, trucks, airplanes, and trains. As much as the other modes of transport have developed over the centuries, the use of rail transport is growing increasingly as well. Debate wise the International Energy Agency have discussed the advantages and the future of railway to be a promising one. The implementation the green technology is becoming more prominent in the marketplace. In response to the existing need of making green products that can serve the green market demands, NCRA CMS Lab MUET has developed a Track Recording Vehicle (TRV) prototype as a substitution to the prevailing Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) operated Track Recording Vehicles. As the traditional Track Recording Vehicles are just mere trains equipped with the Inertial Measurement Units (IMUs) which consume gallons of fossil fuel to operate. The developed TRV is an initiation of upcoming trend of portable instrumented TRV that operates with the rechargeable battery and is capable enough to determine track faults like squats and turn out frogs more efficiently than the existing ICE based TRVs using accelerometer module ADXL335 and logistic regression. The developed instrument was validated on an actual railway track. The result shows that the developed instrument can be used to determine the serviceability of the railway track, thus this strategy helps in improving the safety Standards.