Project Title: Smart Oil Plug; Disruptive Rail Gearbox Condition Monitoring Solution

Smart Oil Plug; Disruptive Rail Gearbox Condition Monitoring Solution The Smart Oil Plug is designed to reduce the risk of gearbox failures and increase time between routine maintenance intervals. Improved confidence in gearbox condition not only reduces risks of incidents but it aims to significantly extend running time and mileage between major overhauls. This project allows scaling up a recently developed technology, funded by Innovate UK, to take it from the initial sucessful field trial, to a larger first of a kind pioneering demonstrator trial on 40 gearbox units and to bring the product to full commercial readiness. The Smart Oil Plug measures oil temperature, ferrous debris, and gearbox vibration, and wirelessly transmits this information to a globally accessible portal for stakeholders to access and use for asset management. The system can deploy an alarm in cases when immediate action is required, such as for example rapidly increasing gearbox temperature, sudden onset of oil debris, significantly increased vibration level, etc. Following completion of a previous successful Innovate UK grant it transpired that delivery of the above parameters is now complemented by a significant amount of additional information including integrity of the entire drive system, wheel flat detection and rail track quality monitoring, on in-service trains.