Abstract
This paper investigates the use of drive-by train measurements for railway track monitoring. An in-service Irish Rail train was instrumented while using accelerometers and a global positioning system. The measurements were taken over two months and the train bogie accelerations from 60 passes on the Dublin-Belfast line were used for this study. A 6 km section of the line is the particular focus, where the maintenance measurements from a Track Recording Vehicle (TRV) were available. The Hilbert transform is used to obtain the instantaneous amplitudes of the acceleration signals. A new representation of the signal is proposed to show the signal energy level as a function of train location. It is shown that the forward speed of the train has a significant influence on the energy level of the signals. Therefore, a two-step speed correction is applied to the data. First, data from passes with forward speed below a certain limit are removed from the data set. Subsequently, a scaling factor is defined for the remaining signals and the energy levels of those signals are scaled while using online speed measurements. The scaled amplitudes are compared with the TRV data. It is shown that the energy levels of the signals match the TRV measurements very well.
Highlights
Railways constitute a major portion of transport infrastructure in most countries
The idea of drive-by railway track monitoring is investigated while using field measurements
An operational train from the Irish Rail fleet is instrumented using accelerometers installed on the train bogie
Summary
Railways constitute a major portion of transport infrastructure in most countries. It is essential to employ good strategies for the maintenance of railway networks to avoid a disruption to services and ensure the safety of the system. Sensors are installed on an operational train to provide faster, cheaper, and more reliable monitoring approaches It does not disrupt service provision and it can provide real time data on track condition, facilitating more timely responses to developing track failures. Such instrumentation can obviate the need for specialist vehicles, such as the TRV. Inertial sensors can be installed on the train axle box, bogie, or inside the carriage, and the responses are continuously measured
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