US Patent Issued to UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA on Feb. 24 for "Predicting railroad ballast fouling conditions based on ballast image" (South Carolina Inventors)

ALEXANDRIA, Va., Feb. 24 -- United States Patent no. 12,561,779, issued on Feb. 24, was assigned to UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA (Columbia, S.C.).

"Predicting railroad ballast fouling conditions based on ballast image" was invented by Yufeng Gong (Columbia, S.C.) and Yu Qian (Irmo, S.C.).

According to the abstract* released by the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office: "Evaluating railway ballast fouling condition is critical to assessing track conditions and arranging proper ballast maintenance. Because fouled ballast materials with different fouling conditions have different material properties, these properties can be used to evaluate the fouling severity. Various previously developed approaches to estimating fouling conditions often require ...