Evaluation of Railway Track Safety with a New Method for Track Quality Identification

AbstractA 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 (L/V) 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 t...