This paper presents the background study, development, and testing of a monitoring system for an intermodal freight wagon. The prototype of the onboard unit, developed by the research group of Railway Engineering of Politecnico di Torino, was installed and tested on an intermodal freight wagon owned by the company Ambrogio Trasporti S.p.a. as part of the project ITS Cluster Italy 2020. Significant advances have been made in the field of freight train monitoring. In recent years, many companies have presented specific devices with the aim of monitoring the operating conditions of goods wagons. The developed prototype was tested on a real track. The main vehicle parameters monitored during the tests were the temperature of brake blocks, the operating pressure of the brake system, and the acceleration of the vehicle. The measurements allowed the team to verify the effectiveness and reliability of the monitoring system in harsh conditions. A significant amount of the measured data was then used to validate a first energetic model that is useful for the subsequent development of monitoring and diagnostic algorithms.

In recent years, the interest in monitoring the operating conditions of freight wagons has grown significantly to improve the safety of railway vehicles. The railway research group of the Politecnico di Torino has been working for years on the development of solutions to effectively monitor the operating conditions of passenger and freight rail vehicles. As part of the national Cluster ITS Italy 2020 project funded by Italian ministry of education, university and research (MIUR), the Politecnico di Torino has collected a considerable amount of data thanks to the wired and wireless prototypes developed. The data obtained are used in this paper for the validation and calibration of a finite element (FE) model that simulates the temperature variation of a cast iron brake block due to braking operations of an intermodal freight wagon. The developed model can be a useful tool to predict the temperature at the wheel–shoe interface as a function of the current operating conditions since a direct measurement is not easy to perform.

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