Railway Track Loss-of-Stiffness Detection Using Bogie Filtered Displacement Data Measured on a Passing Train

Abstract

This paper presents an innovative numerical framework for railway track monitoring using acceleration measurements from sensors installed on a passenger train. A numerical model including a 10 degrees of freedom train passing over a three-layer track is employed. The bogie filtered displacement (BFD) is obtained from the bogie vertical acceleration using a numerical integration method and a band-pass filter. The BFD is compared to the filtered track longitudinal profile and can be seen to contain the main features of the track profile. This is also experimentally confirmed using field measurements where an in-service Irish Rail train was instrumented using inertial sensors. The proposed algorithm is employed to find the BFDs from the bogie accelerations. A track level survey was also undertaken to validate the measurements. It is shown that the BFDs from several passes are in good agreement with the surveyed profile. Finally, the BFDs are numerically used to find track defects such as hanging sleepers. The mean of the BFDs obtained from two populations of train passes over a healthy and a damaged track are employed to detect the loss of stiffness at the subgrade layer. The effect of the train forward speed variation and measurement noise are also investigated.

Drive-by Methodologies Applied to Railway Infrastructure Subsystems: A Literature Review—Part II: Track and Vehicle

“…Still concerning damage to track interlayers, a recent study by Malekjafarian et al [64] further explored the detection of damage associated with track loss of stiffness, particularly hanging sleepers, through the use of the filtered bogie displacement (FBD) response calculated by the integration of acceleration signals. Firstly, a numerical study, based on a 2D 10 DOF vehicle model and a three-layer track model, was conducted to demonstrate the good correlation between the FDB and the track's loaded profile.…”

VEqMon2D—Equations of motion generation tool of 2D vehicles with Matlab

“…In the field of railway engineering, these simplified vehicle representations have been used, for instance, to E-mail address: daniel.cantero@ntnu.no. study the vehicle-bridge interaction [5], to determine the railway track longitudinal profile from vehicle measurements [6] and to evaluate the track condition [7].…”

Identification of optimal accelerometer placement on trains for railway switch wear monitoring via multibody simulation

“…The collected data is significantly constrained by specific installation positions, posing difficulties in supporting a comprehensive analysis of tracks in the area of interest for decision-makers. A current trend in railway health monitoring to overcome this limitation is to install accelerometers on trains (Chudzikiewicz et al, 2014;Fernández-Bobadilla and Martin, 2023;Malekjafarian et al, 2023) utilized accelerometers on wheelsets to compute a defined track quality indicator, while (Malekjafarian et al, 2021) successfully differentiated between healthy and damaged tracks using accelerometers in the bogie on a service train. They assumed that accelerometers installed on wheelsets or in the bogie were the most important, considering the purpose of the track quality indicator (close to the track), the existing installation, and their lesser susceptibility to the suspension system.…”