Wireless Monitoring of Ballastless Track Slab Deformation for High-Speed Railway

Abstract

Ballastless slab track is the main form of ballastless track for the high-speed railway in the world. Deformation overrun of the track slab will seriously affect the smoothness of the track, and even lead to train safety accidents. The current practice mainly relies on manual periodic inspection, which is inefficient and cannot achieve continuous monitoring. Therefore, it is urgent to develop a real-time deformation monitoring solution for high-speed railway track slabs. This paper, based on multiple MEMs sensors, presents a multi-source sensor fusion and dynamic response analysis algorithm to identify the deformation mode of the track slab. Harvesting the vibration energy of the slab track instead of an electrochemical battery-only strategy could contribute to the achievement of carbon neutrality goals in the field of rail transit. Therefore, a self-contained system approach is developed for wireless monitoring of the track slab deformation. The deformation value of the track slab can be obtained with a monitoring resolution of <=1.5 mm, compliant with maintenance specifications for ballastless slab track deformation assessment (i.e., 1.5 mm for grade I threshold and 2 mm for grade II threshold). This work offers a new means for the safe operation and maintenance of high-speed railways and could also contribute to the realization of the strategic goal of the “dual-carbon project” in China.