Professional Doctorate in Engineering Programme Maintenance at University of Twente

The Professional Doctorate in Engineering (PDEng) programme Maintenance is a 2-year post MSc technological programme with a focus on technological design. This programme at the University of Twente contains an educational part that will be followed at the University, and a design project that will be carried out at Strukton Rail. The educational programme will have an in-depth and broadening character with ample attention for professional development and will be partly tailored to the design project. In collaboration with Strukton Rail, high level, creative and new designs for complex issues will be aimed at.

Strukton Rail is a railway full service provider, based in several European countries (the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Denmark and France). Strukton Rail operates also on product or project basis in other countries including Australia, India and Saudi Arabia. Core business is construction, maintenance and renewal of railway infrastructure (track, signaling systems, power supply and catenary, data and telecommunication), rolling stock systems and passenger information systems. Strukton Rail employs approximately 3,500 people (2,200 in the Netherlands). Strukton Rail maintains nearly 50% of the Dutch railway network and substantial parts of the Swedish and Italian networks. Strukton Rail deploys railway measurement, inspection and data management services through Eurailscout Inspection & Analysis bv. In a joined effort visual inspection of switches, track and catenary systems have been introduced to replace foot patrols and release possessions for inspection. Strukton Rail is member of Strukton Group, full-service provider of infrastructure and accommodation solutions.

Strukton Rail’s ambition is to optimize maintenance operations, monitor and inspect critical infrastructure and improve availability, maintainability, reliability and safety of railway infrastructure. Development and improvement of measurement, inspection and monitoring systems, data analysis and decision support systems and intelligent data management tools and equipment are objectives of Strukton Rail’s R&D portfolio.

In this assignment, an application will be designed that can be used to analyse rail measurement data automatically. These measurements, like Eddy current / ultrasonics / profile measurements, are performed on a regular basis (one / twice a year) with a special measurement train, or during ad-hoc inspections at certain locations. Existing data analytics techniques will be applied to detect anomalies in the data sets in an early stage, which can be used to trigger specific maintenance activities. Anomalies can be found by either deviations from standard values (within a certain range) or by a-typical evolution of the values over time.
The detected anomalies will be analyzed in more detail using advanced models based on physics-of-failure (wear / fatigue models) and detailed usage and load histories. These models are being developed in a parallel project, and will be applied to understand the origin of detected anomalies. In that sense, data-driven and model-based approaches for detection and prediction of rail track failures will be connected.

The activities in the present PDEng project entail the characterization of existing data sources, motivated selection of the most suitable sources, collecting, preprocessing and analyzing the data and designing a user-friendly user interface.

Deadline Application: 16-05-2017

Further details:
Professional Doctorate in Engineering programme Maintenance at University of Twente