The railway transport development strategy requires a comprehensive approach to assessing the state of technical infrastructure in accord with international standards.
Comprehensive diagnostics have the following advantages:
-- enhanced accuracy as a result of monitoring and analysing the entire range of parametres;
-- reduced diagnostic systems and technical infrastructure element maintenance costs due to factual state repairs;
-- enhanced throughput capacity due to reduced infrastructure maintenance-and-repair intervals and combined infrastructure-maintenance operations.
It took 18 months to develop the integral diagnostic complex for accomplishing these objectives. In 2007, Russian President Vladimir Putin inspected the high-speed Archimedes diagnostic and measurement train, manufactured by Italy's Mer Mec company specialising in rail inspection and diagnostics. Russian Railways specialists also assessed the maintenance train's performance in Italy. After that, it was decided to develop the Integral diagnostic complex.
Mer Mec also made a commercial offer to purchase the Archimedes equipment worth 50 million euros, minus the cost of rolling stock and subcontractors' operations and offered to jointly manufacture similar equipment for Russian Railways.
Mer Mec managers held preliminary talks with their counterparts from the Tvema group supplying non-destructive testing and technical diagnostics equipment. Both sides discussed the possible joint creation of a high-speed diagnostic train for Russian Railways but made no headway due to high project costs.
Russian manufacturers assessed the Archimedes diagnostic and measurement train's performance and subsequently moved to develop a similar train that would cost ten times less but would have the same functional potential. The Integral diagnostic complex which features state-of-the-art technology utilizes the latest commercial diagnostic systems and those having no Russian equivalents.
The complex uses 16 matrix video imagers, 12 linear video imagers, 22 laser sensors, two laser scanners, 180 ultrasonic sensors, 49 magnetic sensors, one thermal imaging system and ten temperature sensors to monitor infrastructure elements.
The Integral diagnostic complex can record 117 parameters of infrastructure elements. This is more than the Italian-made Archimedes diagnostics and measurement train. The modular complex's systems can be used as a single whole or for optional component analysis. Its railcars have a maximum speed of 160 kph, while their equipment can operate at speeds of up to 250 kph.
The complex has passed technical tests and is ready for experimental operations. There are plans to equip all railways with these rolling complexes, which will operate first on high-speed routes.