Fault detection of railway track by multi-resolution analysis

Abstract

This paper describes how conditions of track have conventionally been measured using exclusive inspection vehicles. If the conditions of the track can be detected by attaching simple sensors such as accelerometers on board commercial vehicles, more efficient maintenance of tracks would be possible. This paper describes rail corrugation detection from the vertical acceleration of a vehicle body by time frequency analysis. An actual vehicle running tests on a commercial line was conducted, in which vertical acceleration of axle-boxes and a vehicle body were measured. This paper shows the rail corrugation can be detected from the vertical acceleration of a vehicle body by multi-resolution analysis (MRA) using wavelet transform.