Delhi Metro to adopt condition based maintenance technology

New Delhi (Urban Transport News): The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) is planning to install state-of-the-art health monitoring equipment, which will detect faults in the major components of the trains and generate an alarm to its Control Centre. After the installation, the equipment would make maintenance of metro trains more scientific and less dependent on manual intervention. While explaining the technology to TOI, S S Joshi, Director (Rolling Stock) of DMRC said that DMRC is moving from time-based maintenance of trains to condition-based maintenance system.

DMRC, however, wants to put in place a system where components at risk of developing a glitch could be detected as early as possible and rectified." He said that currently, different components of a train have a fixed maintenance schedule, during which they are checked in the train maintenance depots. “We are going to install special equipment in trains to monitor the health of systems, so that maintenance can be optimized. This equipment will also ensure that we don’t do unnecessary maintenance where it is not required,” he added.

He said that primarily the major components that these onboard equipment will monitor are bearings, wheels, springs, suspensions, etc. According to him, at present, all trains are microprocessor controlled and the latest equipment that DMRC plans to install will make the whole system more state-of-the-art. If any component is faulty, they will get information about the fault in advance thanks to the new equipment. Joshi further explained that the onboard health monitoring equipment will also constantly keep a check on different onboard systems and components. For instance, some equipment will be able to gauge overheating of a component and will generate an alarm, and if needed, the train would be withdrawn from service and send back to maintenance depot for further investigation and troubleshooting of the faults.

He said that that the new equipment will also monitor the air-conditioning inside the metro train. In a six-coach train, if two air-conditioners are not working the train can still be operated but with the latest onboard equipment, this information will immediately go to the Operations Control Centre (OCC).