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Effectively monitoring the rate of rail wear is a cost effective solution for the planning of maintenance and for the projection of rail requirements. Typically, portable measurement instruments are used to measure the rail profile and make dimensional measurements. This process was time consuming and inefficient due to the fact that manpower had to travel to remote locations and perform manual measurements whether rail wear existed or not. In addition, this method was subjected to error introduced by the user and by the limited number of samples that can be collected. KLD Labs, Inc. conceived the idea for an automated rail inspection system 15 years ago using an optical technique. This technique was developed into a measurement system called the Optical Rail Inspection and Analysis (ORIAN) system and it was originally designed for the noncontact measurement of rail wear. Since the conception of the ORIAN system, the technology has evolved exponentially and the fulll potential of this innovative rail measurement technology is just beginning to be realized. As this technology further advances it can be adapted to perform even more track structure and geometry measurements. This proposed paper will discuss optical rail profile measurement technology both describing the collection and measurement techniques as well as the type of the data generated.
Daniel L. Magnus (Fri,) studied this question.