Ed Austin (MD) delivered an exciting introduction to Fibre Optic Movement Sensing, known as FOMS, at a recent webinar hosted by RailTech.com in October. FOMS is our new sensing application based on seismic principles, that is capable of characterising ground stability beneath the support structures of rail and road networks. A number of trials have been executed on various infrastructure areas, however this talk focuses mainly on data derived from rail networks.

Sections of track with known ground stability issues were monitored using our Indus interrogator. The results derived from the DAS data collected showed successful correlation with traditional monitoring techniques. Next, Indus was deployed on areas of track where no known problems were previously detected and the data highlighted ground stability issues so far undetected by traditional methods. This was of great interest to track owners and operators. Further railway trials have demonstrated Indus can monitor changes in ground stability over time and further distances, much more efficiently than current monitoring methods.

Watch the webinar here

Focus Sensors will be attending the Intelligent Railway Summit 2022, to report further results and answer your questions on FOMS.