Data Acquisition and Health Analysis of In-service Railway Vehicle for Structural Health Monitoring

Abstract

The enormous number of trains, increasing operation speeds, and complex line environments places greater urgency on ensuring the service safety of rail vehicle structures. This paper focuses on the application of structural health monitoring techniques to perform online monitoring of rail vehicle structural components. An onboard monitoring system was designed and installed, which uses piezoelectric sensors to perform ultrasonic guided wave acquisition, temperature compensation, and damage detection in a particular area during an online tracking test. Ultrasonic guided waves are affected by temperature and stress/loading conditions. The damage indices after temperature compensation change rapidly at different stations and different positions of the railway line, which may be affected by passenger load or line conditions, but remain at a low level after the train has entered the warehouse. The results show that the system can adapt to the railway line environment and automatically collect ultrasonic guided wave data that can be used to assess damage.