Health Condition Monitoring Based on ABA Measurements for High Speed Railway Tracks
Abstract
Rolling contact fatigue is a commonly occurring problem in railways around the world, which when not dealt with correctly, can lead to failures of the track. On high speed railway lines especially such failures can have huge consequences, making early detection of these defects and understanding their development essential. In this paper we use Axle Box Acceleration (ABA) measurements to detect different kinds of rolling contact fatigue such as squats and corrugation. Alterations of the ABA processing methods are discussed in order to make it suitable for high speed line rail structures, and results from a field measurement campaign are shown. This paper also discusses the presence of patterns found especially in the corrugation data, which might indicate the origin of this corrugation is not random but relates to the rail structure itself.