We have filed our second Indian Patent title “A method and system for air brake force monitoring using FBG sensors”. The invention relates to optical fiber sensing technology. In particular, the invention relates to Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) based air brake monitoring system for railways and other heavy vehicles in real-time. The area of concern of this system is air brake monitoring by measuring the force applied by the brake pads on the brake disc in real-time.

FBG is an extrinsic type optical fiber sensor or optical filter that reflects one wavelength of light while transmitting all others. The reflected light travel’s back to the instrument to detect the center wavelength of FBG. FBG sensor converts physical and biochemical perturbation into an optical wavelength shift. FBG is fabricated by exposing photosensitive fiber core to pulsed ultraviolet (UV) laser through an optical phase mask.

A modular design using FBG sensors with visual characteristics is leveraged to discriminate between brake applied/released monitoring of air brake systems in the railway industry. The real-time monitoring of brake status provides wheel protection, reduction in maintenance, preventing locked wheels, optimizing stopping distance and result storage for future references.