Anticipate breakdowns and avoid unnecessary stops in service thanks to an integral knowledge of your units.
Do not invest excessive resources in rudimentary tasks that a monitoring system can perform automatically.
Do not settle for the usual information, increase the knowledge about your rolling stock without excessive expenses and find a way to optimize its use.
WHY TRACK CIRCUIT MONITORING?
Currently, when there is a breakdown on a track circuit, there is no possibility to know its cause. To deal with this lack of knowledge and be able to continue the service, manual modes are used until the breakdown is solved. This situation requires a reduced speed and manual train regulation and will therefore affect the service.
Breakdowns on track circuits are normally caused by external factors, such us humidity, interferences between them and corrosion, which is a long-term degradation that evolve with time and is easy to detect by monitoring the track circuits.
A resolution of a breakdown during service hours has a great impact on the service availability: the line service has to be stopped, maintenance staff on the tracks, etc.
There is a breakdown on a track circuit
What happens next?
Without a monitoring system there is a lack of information, which complicates the diagnosis and therefore the resolution. Receiving data from the track circuit concerned and the adjacent track circuits at the time of the breakdown, makes its resolution easier.
Without information on the track circuit:
Difficult Diagnosis
Complicated diagnosis. No diagnosis means high likeliness of repetition.
Long Resolution time
Long resolution time and high impact on the service
LACK OF KNOWLEDGE
The generated knowledge is neither collected nor shared.
NO PREDICTION POSSIBILITY
Breakdowns cannot be predicted
- Real-time monitoring of track circuit main parameters (voltage, phase, frequency)
- Database with information on breakdowns in the past available
- Identification of failure symptoms
- Description of track circuits performance
- Behavior analysis of groups of adjacent track circuits
- Generation of warnings and descriptive reports in case of a breakdown
BENEFITS OF BREAKDOWN RESOLUTION VIA TRACK CIRCUIT MONITORING BY SMART MOTORS

CIVI
- CiVi is the hardware manufactured by smartmotors® that registers Track Circuit data.
- Installed inside the signaling cabinets, CiVi has been designed to easily fit in small places.
- CiVi accomplishes all quality, electrical and electromagnetic standards.
- Created in collaboration with Weidmüller, a company specialised in electrical components.
Which are the current challenges of track circuit maintenance?
Quantity and dispersion
High volume of track circuit scattered throughout the network
Model diversity
Wide range of models, ages, and operation modes
LOW EFFICIENCY
It requires a lot of workforce and time and can only be performed during night service interruption
Resource scarcity
Very tight maintenance budgets that do not allow for the realization of planned maintenance works
HOW DOES SMART MOTORS MAKE TRACK CIRCUITS MAINTENANCE MORE EFFICIENT?
Information about present and past behavior of track circuits makes it possible to classify them according to their performance.
If there is not enough workforce to perform the traditional preventive maintenance, take a look at the classification and choose the tracks circuits, lines or stations with the worst performance.
You can also set your own preventive maintenance calendars according to the real MTBF and switch from preventive to condition based maintenance, to save resources
Now you have continuous information on your track circuits. Take advantage of that and use it during maintenance tasks and avoid measuring manually.
WHAT OFFERS THE SMART MOTORS SOLUTION THAT DISTINGUISHES IT FROM OTHER SOLUTIONS?
HOW WE WORK