Wabtec Launches Engineering Lab in India
Written by Marybeth Luczak, Executive Editor
On Oct. 13, Wabtec employees Eric Gebhardt (left), Dr. Sujatha Narayan and Gopal Madabhushi inaugurated the company’s new engineering lab in Bengaluru, India.
Wabtec Corp. on Oct. 13 opened a new engineering lab in Bengaluru, India, for rail equipment component design and performance testing.
With a 30,000-square-foot testing lab and a 12,000-square-foot operations center and office space, Wabtec said the new lab is its largest in India and adds to its “growing engineering presence in the country.” Wabtec is among the largest rail equipment manufacturers in India with freight and transit businesses, and employs 2,700 people there with engineering bases in Bengaluru and Hyderabad.
The new facility houses more than 30 complex mechanical-, electrical- and propulsion-related custom-built test rigs, and Wabtec reported that it is planning to relocate and add test rigs over the next three months. Some of the test equipment, such as the Resonance Type 1500 KN Fatigue rig, are unique in India, according to the company.
The facility’s aims, Wabtec said, are to “characterize the performance, understand the failures, [and] predict the service life of components, and validate design improvements.”
“The Global Engineering Lab allows us to conduct ‘Smart Validation’ of products in the most efficient way; this approach enables us to do component-level testing versus system-level testing,” Wabtec Corporate Vice President Gopal Madabhushi said. “The lab’s innovative rigs allow us to design for various operating conditions, [and] gain insights on performance in shortest possible time, which supports successful product launches.”
“The Wabtec India Technology Center and this global engineering lab are vital to our strategy to develop sustainable solutions for our customers worldwide,” said Wabtec Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Eric Gebhardt, who on Oct. 13 inaugurated the lab, along with Wabtec India Regional Senior Vice President Dr. Sujatha Narayan, and other Engineering team members.
“This new lab provides our team in Bengaluru the resources to design and validate products for our global and regional markets,” Narayan said.
