Evaluation of Railway Track Safety with a New Method for Track Quality Identification
Publication: Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 142, Issue 11
Abstract
A new method for track inspection is developed to complement traditional geometric methods. An inertial measuring system and a specialized data treatment method is proposed to evaluate railway track safety, observed from the vehicle dynamic performance point of view. System equations for the inverse vehicle dynamic problem, augmented with the suspension torsion equation, are solved to estimate the wheels driving forces that are directly correlated with the vehicle safety traveling over an irregular track. Results of a measuring campaign on a railway wagon are used to evaluate the present system by direct positional comparison with lateral and vertical contact forces () safety ratio measured with two instrumented wheelsets (IWS) installed on the leading bogie of the wagon. Also, data collected and treated are compared with track geometry measurements. The results of quantified track safety present good agreement with those found using traditional measuring methods. This confirms the ability of the new method to detect the location of the highest potential hazard region, for optimized track maintenance purposes. The new system proves to be a promising method for track safety evaluation.
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Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank the Mechanical Department of the Engineering School of the University of Sao Paulo (EP-USP) for the support to this research, engineer Guilherme Fabiano dos Santos and VALE S.A., which organized and made available the railway resources for the validation tests.
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Information
Published In
Journal of Transportation Engineering
Volume 142 • Issue 11 • November 2016
Copyright
© 2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 19, 2014
Accepted: Jan 28, 2016
Published online: Jun 27, 2016
Published in print: Nov 1, 2016
Discussion open until: Nov 27, 2016
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