A new MEMS sensor for rail safety monitoring

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Railway transportation networks are a critical element of Canada's economy. These linear infrastructure**corridors must safely transport natural resources, raw materials, manufactured goods, and passengers over areas**of long-term track movements due to poor soil conditions, landslide hazards, and urban hazards such as**underground construction. To do this, the geometry of the track (e.g. cross-level, gauge, and warp) must be**maintained within allowable limits in order for maximum permissible track speeds to be maintained and**derailment risk to be minimized. In areas of moving ground, regular monitoring of track geometry is required**to schedule track maintenance to correct track geometry and ensure safety. However, in areas of critical**importance (e.g. a tunnel being bored in the soil under the track), weekly or even daily track inspections may**not be sufficient to capture the onset of accelerating track movements. There is therefore a world-wide market**for a new sensor technology that can monitor track geometry in near real-time (e.g. every 10 minutes) in these**critical areas. The objective of this Engage grant is to partner the innovative rail monitoring capabilities**developed at Queen's University (e.g. vibration-isolated high-speed imaging and distributed fibre optic sensing)**with the world-leader in geotechnical MEMS ground deformation sensors (Measurand Inc.) to perform a field**trial of Measurand's new prototype MEMS rail monitoring sensor to a) assess detection limits of track**geometry changes under real-world conditions, and b) to improve our fundamental scientific understanding of**the mechanism of track deterioration; in particular, to test the hypothesis that the rate of track deterioration can**be used to form the basis of an early warning system to protect against future unsafe track geometry.