School of Control Engineering, Northeastern University at Qinhuangdao, Qinhuangdao 066004, China.
Department of Mechanical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong SAR, China.
Sensors (Basel). 2022 Aug 25;22(17):6409. doi: 10.3390/s22176409.
Small defects on the rails develop fast under the continuous load of passing trains, and this may lead to train derailment and other disasters. In recent years, many types of wireless sensor systems have been developed for rail defect detection. However, there has been a lack of comprehensive reviews on the working principles, functions, and trade-offs of these wireless sensor systems. Therefore, we provide in this paper a systematic review of recent studies on wireless sensor-based rail defect detection systems from three different perspectives: sensing principles, wireless networks, and power supply. We analyzed and compared six sensing methods to discuss their detection accuracy, detectable types of defects, and their detection efficiency. For wireless networks, we analyzed and compared their application scenarios, the advantages and disadvantages of different network topologies, and the capabilities of different transmission media. From the perspective of power supply, we analyzed and compared different power supply modules in terms of installation and energy harvesting methods, and the amount of energy they can supply. Finally, we offered three suggestions that may inspire the future development of wireless sensor-based rail defect detection systems.
铁轨上的小缺陷在过往列车的持续荷载下会迅速发展，这可能导致列车脱轨等灾难。近年来，已经开发出许多种用于轨道缺陷检测的无线传感器系统。然而，这些无线传感器系统的工作原理、功能和权衡缺乏全面的综述。因此，我们从传感原理、无线网络和电源三个不同的角度对基于无线传感器的轨道缺陷检测系统的最新研究进行了系统的综述。我们分析和比较了六种传感方法，以讨论它们的检测精度、可检测缺陷类型以及检测效率。对于无线网络，我们分析和比较了它们的应用场景、不同网络拓扑结构的优缺点以及不同传输介质的传输能力。从电源的角度来看，我们分析和比较了不同的电源模块在安装和能量收集方法方面的情况，以及它们能够提供的能量。最后，我们提出了三个建议，可能会激发基于无线传感器的轨道缺陷检测系统的未来发展。
