Review of Instrumented Wheelset Technology and Applications

The measurement of wheel-rail interaction is crucial to quantify the running behaviour of a railway vehicle. The best way to continuously perform this measurement is to use a so-called “instrumented wheelset”, i.e. a wheelset of the vehicle under tests with some transducers fitted without large modifications. Current technologies consist primarily of a set of strain gauges glued onto the wheel we and/or the axle body that senses the elastic strain of these bodies allowing reconstruction, through a proper calibration, the forces that are mutually exchanged at the wheel-rail contact. The methods that are currently used are analysed and compared according to the most recent scientific literature.