Develop a New Approach Measuring the Wheel/Rail Interaction Loads

Abstract

Determine and control the impact of rolling stock on the railway track, one of the significant subjects of railway engineering, especially with heavy traffic and innovative freight cars with increased axle loads. Different methods utilized to measure the lateral impact of rolling stock on a railway based on the use of strain gauges installed on the rail differ in the location of strain gauges and the specifics of processing the received signals. The shortage of these methods that the lateral force arising from the wheel/rail interaction determined when the wheel position over the strain gauges sections. Therefore, continuous registration of details in the wheel/rail contact is impossible. Multiple passes of the test rolling stock along the measuring section are required to receive the right results. In this article, a new method developed to continue recording the lateral forces of the wheel/rail interaction by measuring stresses in two sections of the rail on a significant part of the sleeper space. The railway track experiments approved this method’s ability to restore the lateral force of not more than 4% standard deviation along the measuring zone’s length and increased the volume of reliable statistical data obtained, improved the measurement accuracy, and reduced the time and cost.