Research And Development On Testing And Management System Of Rail Point Machine

Point machines are for changing the connections of railway tracks at crossways thus changing the route of the incoming trains. This kind of equipment is built to last a long time with high reliability, some imported point machines can be maintenance-free during the whole lifetime. However, these machines are often used in outdoor difficult conditions, subject to tare and ware, furthermore, any failure of such machine can cause large lost in wealth and human life, therefore they are all checked and repaired when necessary periodically to ensure safety and reliability.As the railway becoming faster, many new and powerful point machines are used. The test machine which was designed to test ZD6 series point machines in the past can not be used to test the new ones. A new test machine is required. The author has participated in a project to create such a new test machine. In this project, the author studied many different types of point machines and their test machines, together with the knowledge of RS232 communication and Object Oriented Methodology, made contributions to the design and development of the hardware and software systems in the test machine.In this paper, the author presents the following research innovative results from this project:l.Discribed the functioning and structure of some existing electric point and hydraulic point machines, based on such knowledge, explained the general design of a new test machine.2.The author has carried out the hardware design of the test system and the actual implementation. RS-232 serial communication protocol was used for the communication between PC and ATMel's AVR chip microcomputer.3.Desgin and developed the software system which not only collects but also manages the test data using SQL Server and C++ Builder6.0 under Windows XP. This system allows storing and retrieving the data, which is very useful to the test engineer.4.Based on the fact that network technology become more and more widely used, the author explored the possibility of a distributed real-time monitoring and control system of the point machine using controller area networks and RS485 networks.Finally, the conclusions and the prospects of future developments of the point machine testing bed are put forward.