Continuous monitoring and evaluation of railway tracks: proof of concept test

Abstract

A R&D Project was recently completed in Portugal that aimed at designing, developing and demonstrating the applicability of an innovative and integrated approach to assess the performance and condition of railway tracks. A system prototype was developed and installed on board of a self-propelled railway maintenance vehicle. The system is designed to continuously evaluate the vertical stiffness of the track and to detect disturbances on the wheel and rail dynamic contact interactions. The system is also able to post-process the acquired data taking into account structural aspects of the track. Following the work described in another paper submitted to ICSI 2019, this paper presents the methodology used in this project to process the acquired data and determine the relevant structural railway track parameters, such as railway track vertical stiffness, some geometrical properties of the rails and characteristic resonance frequencies of the vehicle-rail dynamic interaction. It also presents the results obtained from the first test using the prototype on a railway track under regular operation. For this purpose, a section of the track was instrumented with additional on-site equipment to provide data for further system assessment and validation. The instrumented section comprised part of a bridge over Ribeira de São Martinho and the adjacent transition zone, near Alcácer do Sal, in Portugal. The data obtained from this proof of concept test, together with the results gathered from previous phases of this project, suggest that the proposed approach is adequate in this context.