A new approach to the analysis and presentation of vertical track geometry quality and rail roughness

✍ Scribed by Eric G. Berggren; Martin X.D. Li; Jan Spännar

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2008
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 973 KB
• Volume: 265
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0043-1648
• DOI: 10.1016/j.wear.2008.01.029

✦ Synopsis

A new approach on enhancing the assessment of track geometry quality and rail roughness by means of train-track interaction simulation and wavelength content analysis is presented. The dynamic model includes vehicle, track and linearized wheel-rail contact with moving irregularities and can be simulated either in the frequency domain by using FFT or in the time domain by constructing a filter function based on system identification technique. The system is suitable to calculate wheel-rail forces for very long track sections and for several vehicle types under a wide range of travelling speeds since the computational scheme is very efficient (300 km/s on a standard computer). With numerical results we demonstrate the potential benefits of improving conventional track geometry inspection methods and highlight short defects (0.5-2 m) as a cause of high dynamic wheel-rail interaction forces. By using a wavelength weighting of measured rail roughness a new improved way of analyzing rail roughness data is also presented. This improves condition assessment of tracks and rails and will enable the track engineer to monitor the track in a better way.