Optimized vehicle acceleration measurement for rail track condition monitoring

Abstract

In this work, a new approach is proposed for monitoring the irregularities of rail track and it necessary to increase the safety of transportation. Traditional Track Recording Vehicles (TRV) will inspect the track in the midnight when all the services are completed. Each track lines are inspected only once or less in a month so that any serious degradation in the track line is not detected on time which causes a serious threat to the safety of railway system. Therefore in recent years focus has been shifted to the in-service vehicle monitoring. In this paper bogie and car body acceleration measurements are used to detect track irregularities. Bogie and car body sensors give information about track alignment which is further investigated using the mathematical model and the frequency response analysis. Simulation and the field results show the effectiveness of the proposed system. The differential evolution (DE) algorithm is used to optimize the values of irregularities which is received from the accelerometers placed in the axle box and bogie. Simulation is carried out for two different speeds of the train and the comparison is made between the track geometry measurement and the proposed DE method and the results indicate that the effectiveness of the proposed technique.