Detection of CRTS II slab track arching based on dynamic responses of the car body

Abstract

Slab arching is one of the most common damages of the slab track system in Chinese high-speed railway, which causes the instability of the track structure, changes the wheel-rail dynamic characteristics, and even affects the safety. Therefore, to prevent the occurrence of the above problems, the first important step is to detect the slab arching in advance. There have been some detection methods for slab arching, but it is difficult to detect the arching under different degrees, especially for the arching in the early stage. Aiming at the current situation, this paper proposed an arching detection method based on the dynamic responses of the car body. Integrated the analytical mode decomposition and continuous wavelet transform, the arching-induced characteristics in the car body vertical acceleration data, calculated by the vehicle-track finite element model, were found. After that, the measured data from different inspection areas were used for arching detection based on the discovered characteristics. The results showed that the amplitude of the component of the wavelength from 4 m to 6 m of the car body vertical acceleration could be used for slab arching detection. The method has good adaptability to different arching degrees. In practice, the proposed method can be used to detect slab arching, thus guide scientific maintenance.