Waveband Analysis of Track Irregularities in High-Speed Railway from On-Board Acceleration Measurement

Abstract

This paper is focused on waveband analysis of the lateral and vertical track irregularities from the on-board acceleration measurement of in-service high-speed trains. The track irregularities play important roles to determine dynamic stability of vehicles and ride quality of passengers, so that their amplitude and wavelength should be monitored continuously and carefully. Measuring acceleration at the axle-box or bogie of the trains has been under consideration for low-cost implementation and robust to a harsh railway environment. To estimate the track irregularities, lateral and vertical vibration caused by the wheel/track interaction is measured by the axle-box and bogie mounted accelerometers of an in-service high-speed train. A Kalman filter is used to prevent unrealistic drifts in the estimation. By applying the waveband-pass and compensation filters to the estimated displacement, it is possible to estimate the track irregularities. A distance-wavelength representation is used to identify their waveband in an intuitive way. It is verified by comparing with a commercial track geometry measurement system. From their comparison, it confirms that the representation can produce a satisfactory result.