Abstract
The rail fastening system is an important part of a high-speed railway track. It is always critical to the operational safety and comfort of railway vehicles. Therefore, the condition detection of the rail fastening system, looseness or absence, is an important task in railway maintenance. However, the vision-based method cannot identify the severity of rail fastener looseness. In this paper, the condition of rail fastening system is monitored based on an automatic and remote-sensing measurement system. Meanwhile, wavelet packet analysis is used to analyze the acceleration signals, based on which two damage indices are developed to locate the damage position and evaluate the severity of rail fasteners looseness, respectively. To verify the effectiveness of the proposed method, an experiment is performed on a high-speed railway experimental platform. The experimental results show that the proposed method is effective to assess the condition of the rail fastening system. The monitoring system significantly reduces the inspection time and increases the efficiency of maintenance management.
Highlights
The functions of a rail fastening system (Figure 1) are fixing the rail on the track slab and preventing the longitudinal and lateral movements of the rail
A remote measurement system was used to monitor the condition of a rail fastening system
An efficient method was investigated to evaluate the condition of rail fastening system
Summary
The functions of a rail fastening system (Figure 1) are fixing the rail on the track slab and preventing the longitudinal and lateral movements of the rail. Through offering flexibility, the rail fastening system can counteract the vertical wave movements of the track, from which would result in the reduction of the dynamic forces between wheel and rail [1,2]. The components of a rail fastening system are vulnerable to fatigue damage due to wheel-rail interaction [3]. The reduction of frictional resistance between the T-bolt and nut causes the clamping force of a rail fastener to decrease. In this situation, the rail longitudinal resistance will not meet the design requirements. The condition detection of rail fastening systems, for looseness or absence, urgently needs to be studied
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