Project Acronym: MAXBE
Project Title: MAXBE: Interoperable monitoring, diagnosis and maintenance strategies for axle bearings
Responsible @ACMEC: Jorge Ambrósio
Participants @IST: Marisa Lima (MSc student); Gil Santos (MSc Student)
Other partners: FEUPorto (Pt); REFER (Pt); Ansaldo STS (It); IVE UT Braunschweig (D); COMSA (Sp); UC Cork (UK); Evoleo (Pt); NEM Solutions (Sp); MERMEC (It); SKF (It); D2S(Be); DL (Be); EMEF(Pt); IMOSS (Be); KRESTOS (UK); UoBirmingham (UK); NOMADTech (Pt).
Funding Institution: EU (7th Framework Programme)
Project Reference: 314408 (FP7-SST-2012-RTD-1)
Funding: 98 k€(IST/IDMEC); 4596 k€(Total)
Duration: 36 months starting January 2013
URL: paginas.fe.up.pt/~maxbe/

Summary:
The axle bearing damage process has safety and economic implications on the exploitation of railways systems. Axle bearing damage has been the object of intense attention by railway operators and transportation authorities, leading to a variety of approaches and systems currently in place to deal with the problem. However in Europe there is some lack of standardisation which justifies R&D work on condition monitoring and early diagnosis of axle bearings by technology integration. Moreover the current European documents do not present any guidelines for the maintenance management of the rolling stocks with regards to axle bearings, which make the association of monitoring, diagnosis and maintenance an interesting approach. The MAXBE project appears in this context and its strategic objective is to provide validated and demonstrated concepts, strategies and guidelines for the interoperable axle bearing monitoring and diagnosis that support the railway operators and managers dealing with the threats imposed by the existence of axle bearing defects. The MAXBE project will have impact for the reliability, availability, maintainability and safety (RAMS) of rolling stock and infrastructure, focused on the axle bearings.