Indian students invent device to ‘prevent derailment’

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Graduate students at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT), Kanpur have invented a matchbox sized device ‘Jugnu’, that can monitor wear and tear of railway tracks, thereby preventing derailment.

The new device will replace bulky, box-like contraption which is currently used by Indian Railways.

Millions of people travel daily across the Indian Railways’ network which has seen some of the world’s worst rail accidents.

Kshitij Deo, M.Tech in mechanical engineering, one of the four developers of the device from the vibration and dynamics lab of the IIT said:

“Our device is a supplementary system for monitoring track health, making it simpler to integrate with the existing railway infrastructure. It has a battery life of 10 hours and can be recharged by USB port on computers.”

The device is based on micro-electro mechanical system and is designed and developed under N.S. Vyas, professor and head mechanical engineering and the Railways’ Research Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO), Lucknow along with team of IIT-Kanpur’s mechanical engineering graduates.

The device can monitor track health more comprehensively and enable efficient track maintenance.

If there is any fault on tracks, it is detected in real time and recorded automatically to prevent derailment thanks to the oscillation monitoring system, a cutting-edge device weighing just 100 grams.

The device once placed on the floor of a running train’s coach measures and records vibrations. If the vibrations cross a certain threshold, especially in case of a critical fault, the device alerts engineers with audio-visual signals (beeps and flashing LEDs).

The institute plans to install at least three to four of the devices on trains running on each route to monitor each track on a regular basis.

It took the students more than one year to complete the product, which included 25 field trials on trains, including Shatabdi and Rajdhani Expresses.

1 COMMENT

  1. The other way to do this would be for train companies throughout the world to provide their staff and passengers with smart phone apps that would be able to read the phone’s sensors – including GPS – and be able to provide readings that could be emailed to a central server which would be able to monitor any deterioration in track quality, and be able to pinpoint it extremely accurately.

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