A novel design of train air brake test instrument

The design and development of a novel train air brake test instrument is presented in this paper. The instrument is designed with fast proportional valves and air pressure sensors which are controlled by a front embedded system and a supervisory computer. By using PID control algorithm, the instrument can generate the testing air pressure curve automatically to meet the five kinds of train brake valve testing procedure. The control algorithm is running in the embedded system which is designed with a System on a Chip (SoC) microcontroller. The operation of the instrument is realized by using the supervisory panel computer with a touch screen. The field test experiments show that the instrument can find out whether there is a fault valve in the train air brake system.