PRT300 Portable Rail Tribometer
Our portable tribometer provides friction coefficient measurements over a wide range of operating conditions for rail inspection and more informed, data-driven decisions on friction management strategies.
Features
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Lightweight design
Weighing in at under 4kg, the PRT300 is a truly portable solution for accurate measurements in the field. Where access to track can sometimes be a long walk, you’ll be happy with the portability of our device.
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Validated results in >60 seconds
Depending on the test you are running, you can go from arriving on site, to taking your first reading in less than a minute.
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Removable Storage
Each tribometer is equipped with a 32GB micro SD card, that can hold multiple thousands of results. These can be accessed on screen, on site, and also back in the lab.
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Long Battery Life
With over 300 measurements to a charge, and at a wide range of operating temperatures, the battery in the PRT300 will easily outlast a day of testing.
Applications
Wheel/rail friction is difficult to measure directly. A tribometer creates a model wheel/rail system and measures the friction of this system.
The accuracy of the measurement is determined by how close the model system is to the real system of interest, how well the model system can be controlled and how accurately the force measurement can be taken.
With results validated against full scale test facilities, the Rivelin Rail PRT300 is designed to produce the most accurate measurement possible in a lightweight device.
Trial and error or visual inspections don’t cut it elsewhere in the industry, yet they are used far too often in friction management. Our portable tribometer provides immediate and comprehensible data for more informed decision making:
Identify friction irregularities, for example low adhesion “hotspots”
Inspect rail after safety incidents
Determine and compare performance criteria of friction management products such as rail cleaning, traction enhancers and lubricants
Optimise friction management strategies
Design principals
How does it work?
The Rivelin Rail PRT300 portable tribometer magnetically clamps to the top of the rail to provide point measurements. A freely rotating measurement ball is used, creep is generated by skewing the axis of rotation of the ball relative to the direction of motion at a set angle. This generates lateral creep in the contact, the tangent of the angle gives the effective linear creep.
Results
Displayed on screen and saved to micro-SD card
Friction Coefficient
Environmental conditions; Rail temperature, air temperature, relative humidity
GPS co-ordinates
Result validation and comparison
The compact design means that our tribometer can be used in the lab as well as the field. Results are validated against The University of Sheffield’s full scale wheel and rail test facility under dry, wet and lubricated conditions with excellent comparability between results.
Comparison between lab results (under controlled conditions) and field results (under representative usage) has previously been difficult. Our tribometer provides a “common denominator”, when used in the lab and field.
Back-to-back testing, also useful for lab to field scaling
Comparability between tribometer and full scale test facility, over 500 measurements with a range of rail conditions