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Novel way of testing Ground Speed Radar for a Locomotive

A new way to test a Ground Speed Radar for a locomotive

  1. The diesel locomotives WDP*  and WDG* series are GM EMD Locomotives 
  2. These locomotives use a Doppler effect (Radar) based ground speed sensor.
  3. This Radar is used for wheel slip measurement, which means that the locomotive has lost traction and its wheels are hopelessly turning and hence not moving.
  4. The quick way of testing this radar is to hold a tuning fork of a certain frequency and depending on its resonant frequency the Radar senses the speed
  5. So ideally anything that resonates at a certain frequency can be used.
  6. A speaker also resonates at certain frequency.
  7. So if a sinusoidal wave is fed to the speaker diaphragm it would also resonate at its base frequency.
  8. Luckily got a speaker set and used an Android Tone generator app and below are the results.
  9. Basically a proof of concept of speed sensing based on frequency of tone.
  10. 2 videos below demonstrate the speed sensor sensing different frequencies based on tone.
  11. The pista green device with the white lens is the radar that is being tested




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