Onboard High-Bandwidth Fiber-Optic Sensing System for Broken Rail Detection

One critical need for monitoring and improving transportation rail safety is early-stage pre-catastrophic-failure detection of rail breakage, or emerging faults under trains.

The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 36: Onboard High-Bandwidth Fiber-Optic Sensing System for Broken Rail Detection details the development of an innovative onboard real-time broken rail and defect monitoring and detection system based on fiber-optic sensing technology that enables early-stage fault detection and repair well before the rail has reached a state which could lead to catastrophic derailment.