Abstract
During the dynamic measurement of chord-based rail corrugation, with the interferences of curve rail and train snaking movement, it is hard to ensure that the measuring points on the rail surface can trace the railhead centerline well the whole time. This introduces the position deviations to the measurement system, and leads to the measurement results cannot reflect the true rail irregularity state. To solve the problem, a position deviation measurement method based on the assistance of bi-linear laser is proposed in this paper. First, by means of three verifications composed of color, dimension and position, the laser stripe regions on railhead are located from original image effectively. Then, by suppressing stripe highlight texture and modifying the traditional Steger algorithm with flexible-widths Gaussian template, we extract the laser stripe centerline accurately, and depict the railhead boundary fast. Last, by locating three chord-based measuring points and calculating the distances from them to the railhead centerline, we obtain the position deviations of each point. The efficiency and superiority of proposed method are verified by vast experiments. The results show that the accuracy of the position deviation of the chord-based measuring points is limited within 0.4mm.
Highlights
Rail corrugation which is caused by wheel–rail interactions and occurs on rail top surfaces along the track longitudinal axis is a vertical track irregularity phenomenon [1], [2]
Compared with the previous method, the most significant breakthrough is that this method is insensitive to the illumination and reflection property of the rail surface
It includes the extraction of effective laser stripe region, suppression of stripe highlight texture, extraction of stripe centerline, railhead boundary definition, location of laser measuring points and deviation measurement
Summary
Rail corrugation which is caused by wheel–rail interactions and occurs on rail top surfaces along the track longitudinal axis is a vertical track irregularity phenomenon [1], [2]. With the improvement of train speed and the existence of rail irregularity, the carriage axial direction changes frequently during the process of moving forward This causes that the line of measuring points could incline to the railhead centerline. RELATED WORK The existence of position deviations of measuring points makes the measurement results cannot reflect the true rail irregularity state To solve this problem, Li et al [14] present a chord-based points correction system by the real-time change of the track gauge. By extracting the railhead boundary from the sophisticated edge image and locating the laser measuring points, they calculate the position deviation of each point accurately This method is sensitive to the illumination and reflection property on the rail surface.
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary 
Published Version (
Free)
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call