The South African Institute of Civil Engineering (SAICE) magazine recently published an article written by Matthew Dick and Jackie van der Westhuizen titled, ‘Vehicle / Track Interaction: Continuous real-time autonomous condition monitoring to effectively manage ‘state of good repair’.

The definitive five-page article, published in the May 2016 issue, presents the increasing use of autonomous track inspection vehicles, and the role of vehicle / track interaction (VT/I) diagnostic equipment to determine the ‘state of good repair’, i.e. identifying and prioritising potential failures before they occur.

Dick and van der Westhuizen describe in detail how ENSCO’s VT/I autonomous systems, in use for more than 15 years, provide near real-time detection of vehicle events caused by track condition risks to improve track safety and enable proactive maintenance planning. The VT/I system is in wide use in the US, Canada, Mexico, and Australia.

To read the complete article, click to download a PDF version or visit SAICE’s online magazine.