Project Title	Development of A Turnout Rail Break Warning (TRBW) System Based on Distributed Optical Fiber Sensing (DOFS) Technologies
University	Penn State Altoona
Principal Investigator(s)	Hai Huang
Funding Source(s) and Amounts Provided (by each agency or organization)	Federal Share $98,844 Match Share $99,662
Total Project Cost	$198,506
Start and End Dates	01/31/2020 - 01/31/2022
Brief Description of Research Project	Recently, rail breaks at turnouts have been identified more and more frequently. An investigation by the European Union found that among turnout rail breaks more than 40% occurred at the switch rails (Figure 2). In the past decades, around 20% of track maintenance and renewal budgets have been spent on switches, not counting the cost associated with disrupted/delayed services (Kassa, et al. 2019). Currently, the rail industry relies primarily on periodic checks to detect rail cracks, using either ultrasonic vehicles (such as Sperry) or visual inspections. To improve railroad operation safety, realtime rail-break detection for turnouts is a great need. In this proposal, a turnout rail break warning (TRBW) system based on fiber optical and NB-IoT technologies is proposed. Although many optical sensing technologies have been developed, those designated as Distributed Optical Fiber Sensing (DOFS) are particularly attractive. By attaching a fiber-optic cable directly to a rail, DOFS is capable of making strain measurements continuously along the entire length.