HavenZuG – Efficiently prevent damage to the track

Harbour railways ensure the transport of goods in German seaports and inland ports. In order to be fully operational at all times, their tracks must be reliably and cost-effectively protected against damage. The solution to this is continuous condition monitoring and preventive maintenance based on this.

The aim of the HavenZuG project is the prototypical implementation, testing and further development of embedded condition monitoring for harbour railways in operational shunting operations. This is intended to supplement established condition monitoring procedures such as track inspections. Due to the data collection during regular operations, no additional journeys or other operational restrictions are required. At the end of the project, the necessary data, information and experience should be available to evaluate the use of such systems on German harbour railways.

In the project, the overall system, consisting of multi-sensor systems on the shunting vehicles and a background system for automatic data analysis and information provision, will be set up as a prototype and tested in the ports of Hamburg and Braunschweig. The measurement data collected forms the basis for the development of AI-based analysis methods for the detection and diagnosis of rail infrastructure faults.

The DLR Institute of Transportation Systems is responsible for the design, creation and commissioning of the multi-sensor system and the associated data collection. Furthermore, data analysis procedures are being developed for the early detection of various track infrastructure faults using the sensor data. The institute is also responsible for analysing image data to obtain status and position information. Based on the high-precision digital map of the track infrastructure, an interactive visualisation of the condition information obtained via web browser is being developed for those responsible for the system.