Engineers at Kansas State University are working on exciting new technology to monitor stress in steel railroad tracks without touching them.
Professor B. Terry Beck from the Carl R. Ice College of Engineering is leading this effort, thanks to over $300,000 in funding from the U.S. Department of Transportation. He’s joined by civil engineering professor Robert J. Peterman, engineering director John Bloomfield from K-State’s Technology Development Institute, and BNSF Railway. Mechanical engineering graduate student Veeshal Modi is also part of the team.
Monitoring rail stress is important to prevent derailments that can happen during extreme weather. In hot temperatures, tracks can buckle under too much pressure, while cold weather can cause them to crack. Both situations can be made worse by the weight of passing trains.
Right now, there isn’t a good way to check rail stress without physical contact. This project aims to change that by using advanced technology to measure strain and temperature in the tracks. The team plans to test their approach in a lab and then in the real world with BNSF Railway. If successful, this could be a major step forward for rail safety.
