Calibration and development of a multi-axis roller bench for monitoring the braking system of a railway vehicle

Summary-The installation of on-board monitoring systems is a fundamental aspect to increase the safety of railway vehicles and to obtain rational and efficient pro-gramming of maintenance interventions. Since the validation of new systems through test runs requires long times and high costs, a possible alternative is to resort to roller-rig systems in real or reduced scale during the early stages of development. The article describes the use of a 1:5 scale multi wheelset roller-rig to test brake system monitoring systems. In particular, the vehicle braking was replicated on the bench by means of a pneumatic system that repro-duces the real one, while the vehicle inertia was simulated by controlling the speed of the rollers in order to consider the real deceleration of the vehicle.