Fassois, On board fault detection and identification in railway vehicle suspensions via a Functional Model Based Method

The combined problem of fault detection, identification, and magnitude estimation in railway vehicle suspen-sions is tackled via a novel Functional Model Based Method. This method is based upon a new class of stochastic functional models, which are capable of accurately representing the system in a faulty state for its continuum of fault magnitudes, as well as statistical decision theory tools. The method’s effectiveness in prop-erly detecting, identifying, and estimating the magnitude of suspension faults, by using only two measured vibration signals, is demonstrated via Monte Carlo experiments with a six degree-of-freedom railway vehicle model.