Research
Since its inception, the UTRGV Railroad Research Group has successfully tackled many problems and safety issues that have plagued the railroad industry. One of the first projects undertaken by the team was the bearing temperature trending phenomenon which was the cause of many costly train stoppages and delays. Thousands of bearings were set out yearly for exhibiting temperature trending and the source of that trending was unknown.
The UTRGV Railroad Research Group was able to identify the source of that troubling phenomenon as vibration-induced roller misalignment, and several papers were published documenting the research findings which have helped the railroad industry mitigate the problem and resulted in changes to their bearing refurbishing practices. Since then, the research group has undertaken many other projects focused on rail safety, such as the development and implementation of continuous bearing condition monitoring technologies for improved bearing operation safety, and auxiliary hydraulic suspension systems for improved railcar side-frame performance to avoid derailments.
The Railroad Research Group at UTRGV is divided into several teams; namely: experiment set-up and fabrication, vibration analysis, thermal analysis, load sensor development, finite element analysis, electronics support, and materials research. Students can choose to be a part of any of these teams or overlap in more than one team. Each team has a designated leader that oversees the daily operations and deliverables of their team.
