photo: Voith press materials/Voith and Siemens Mobility will jointly develop strategies for the maintenance of Scharfenberg couplers
In a project initially scheduled to run for three years, Voith and Siemens Mobility want to develop new and more efficient strategies for overhauling automatic Scharfenberg couplers. This should extend maintenance cycles, leading to cost reductions for rail operators.
As part of the cooperation, Voith is developing an algorithm that enables forecasts on the condition of automatic couplers. These should lead to longer maintenance intervals for the couplers. The predictions for this are made with the help of the new OnCare.Health Schaku app from Voith, which will be integrated into the Railigent® Application Suite from Siemens Mobility. Railigent brings together all relevant data on the status of a rail system in an open ecosystem. By intelligently analyzing the data, the application suite creates significant added value and generates recommendations for action with the aim of optimizing rail operations from individual system components to the entire rail infrastructure.
During the first phase of the project, which will last three years, the Siemens Mobility service teams will first collect relevant data on the condition of the Scharfenberg coupler. A total of 84 trains of the Rhein-Ruhr-Express serve as the data pool. Siemens Mobility has been commissioned to carry out maintenance for the vehicles. Each train is equipped with two Scharfenberg couplers. During its annual inspections, the Siemens Mobility Services team measures key data of the couplers, such as coupling slack or protrusion, and also records their condition as an image. In addition, any maintenance measures taken and numerous other vehicle data, such as the number of couplers and temperature, are included in the data pool, which will be transmitted via Railigent and which is evaluated at Voith
‘‘This long-term cooperation with Siemens is extremely valuable for us to gain a deep understanding of the wear of our Scharfenberg couplers’’ said Dr. Matheus Habets, Vice President Product Management Digitalization Mobility at Voith Turbo
The aim of the second phase of the project is to derive the algorithm from the available information. This then forms the basis for OnCare. Health Schaku was designed by Voith to be integrated into Railigent. Once both phases are completed, the findings will be continuously reviewed to enable even more accurate forecasts in the long run and to further improve Voith and Siemens Mobility products and services. The project is then scheduled for 2031 at the latest.
Source: Voith press releases
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