Five engineering final year students from the Kakinada Institute of Technology and Sciences (KITS), Divili, in East Godavari district, have come up with an innovative project which, they claim can prevent major fire accidents in locomotives, particularly in express trains.
Munaga Prasanth of mechanical branch, along with four other students, visited the locomotive division of the South Central Railway (SCR), Vijayawada, for a five-month-long internship and studied various aspects like functioning of railway engines, their vulnerabilities, possibility of fire accidents in trains and their prevention.
Immediately after completion of the internship, the team started designing a machine using a microcontroller and sensors. “The gas sensor detects smoke emanating from flames and sends out analog signals to the ADC converter which in turn gives out a digital signal to the microcontroller. This will result in opening of the doors of the ‘affected’ bogie and the microcontroller will trigger the water pump,” explains Prasanth.
“When water is pumped through hoists to the sprinkler, a buzzer fixed to the machine will alert the passengers besides sending message alerts to loco pilots and the nearest railway stations,” says Prasanth. Prasanth and his team members P. Ramana, K. Apparao, G. Venkatesh and K. Venkatesh expressed gratitude to their head of the department Subrahmanyam for his guidance that enabled them to complete the project.
They said the project assumed greater significance in the face of frequent fire accidents in trains in addition to being cost-effective and easy to maintain. The boys also thanked the head of the projects in SCR, Vijayawada, for his theoretical support.
