Implementation of wireless temperature sensors for continuous condition monitoring of railroad bearings

At present there are no existing bearing health monitoring systems capable of continuous monitoring of railroad bearings. Current wayside equipment is used to collect intermittent bearing temperatures, which at times could be every 65 km (∼40 mi). To answer this need, IONX, LLC, a subsidiary of Amsted Rail, Inc., has developed low power Wireless Sensor Nodes (WSNs) which can be retrofitted to existing bearing adapters. The WSNs provide continuous monitoring of bearing temperatures as well as the current ambient temperature. Since the nodes are affixed to the bearing adapter surface, a correlation is necessary to estimate the bearing cup temperature using the measured adapter temperature. This thesis presents research conducted to devise reliable experimental correlations that relate both temperatures for four different bearing classes. A finite element model is also developed to verify the experimental findings.