East Palestine Derailment: It’s in the Bearings

The recent derailment of a Norfolk Southern train in East Palestine, Ohio, resulting in a toxic chemical spill was a rare but not unknown event on America’s railroads. Like every other wheeled vehicle in commercial service, rolling stock relies on anti-friction bearings. And like all ball and roller bearings, heat is the major cause of failure. For safety-critical applications in railways, thermography is used to check passing rolling stock for hot bearings, setting an alarm to alert the engineer about the problem. Modern systems can determine the exact car where a hot bearing is located, but predicting catastrophic failure is very difficult. More technology is needed to prevent a repeat of this disaster. * * * Want to watch this podcast as a video? This Week in Engineering is available on engineering.com TV along with all of our other shows such as End of the Line, Designing the Future, Manufacturing the Future, and the Engineering Roundtable.