2B21 Track geometry estimation of railway from car-body acceleration(Condition Monitoring-Infrastructure)

Abstract

This study proposes the track condition monitoring technique using car-body acceleration easily measured by an in-service vehicle for the sake of increase in safety of railway transportation. This paper demonstrates the possibility to estimate the track irregularities of conventional railway tracks using car-body acceleration only. In an inverse problem to estimate track irregularity from car-body acceleration, a Kalman filter was applied to solve the inverse problem. This estimation technique is utilized to estimate the track irregularity in longitudinal level (track geometry and 10m-chord versine). The Kalman filter became able to apply to inverse analysis by expressing track geometry in a random walk model, and having incorporated the model in an equation of state. The estimation technique can support a change of the vehicle velocity by selecting impulse response in the measurement equation for the vehicle velocity. Estimation results revealed that the proposed estimation technique is effective for track condition monitoring with acceptable accuracy for conventional railways.