The new rail force measurement system railFOM, has been launched. It’s an innovative system, able to measure the vertical and lateral force signals produced by a train over the rail track, in a very accurate and reliable way.
The first tests were carried out in the rails of Metro Madrid, and the results showed very high-accuracy signals, never seen before in such a simple and economic system. A very surprising feature is the easy way the system captures the time unit of each measured peak, whose accuracy allows complex calculations such as the attack angle of a train axle when negotiating a curve.
This feature, together with the lateral force measurement, provides railFOM with the capacity of obtaining derailment predictions (apart from the ability of performing static and dynamic weighing, wheel defect detection and speed measurement).
