BCRRE PhD student, Tingyu Xin has won the Ronjon Nag Commercialisation Prize to enable her to further her current railway research and explore market application.
The Prize, which is named after alumnus Ronjon Nag, (Electronic & Electrical Engineering, 1984) asks participants to convince a panel of entrepreneurial alumni that their project has the strongest potential for commercial success. Tingyu was presented with the prize on Saturday as part of the University’s annual alumni reunion and will receive financial investment to further her ideas.
Tingyu’s current research involves analysing the data collected from pantographs with the aim to improve the efficiency of the condition-based faults diagnosis and prognosis. Her commercialisation idea builds upon this research and involves developing a railway pantograph test rig that can implement condition-based fault diagnosis, and therefore realise intelligent and predictive maintenance at depots.
Tingyu said, “Pantograph faults may cause significant railway incidents, increase operational and maintenance costs, downtime of the railway network, and make the rail services less reliable. Therefore, it is necessary to ensure the in-service pantographs are in healthy condition.
“I want to develop a pantograph test rig that can test the pantograph on the roof of the train automatically, instead of taking it off to the floor. The engineers can operate the test rig by using the user-friendly software, which will help to save maintenance cost. Meanwhile, this allows the pantograph to be checked more regularly at depots, and therefore, the reliability of the rail network can be improved.”
Congratulations Tingyu!