Condition monitoring of railway track from car-body vibration using time–frequency analysis

Proper maintenance of railway tracks is essential to ensure railway safety. A track condition monitoring system was developed for the preventive maintenance of the track by installing the on-board sensing device in the in-service vehicles and monitoring the track condition by measuring the car-body acceleration. This paper describes the application of time–frequency analysis for the condition monitoring of railway tracks. Car-body acceleration simulated by a 10-DOF vehicle model, with a faulty track, was used to identify the track faults using Hilbert–Huang transform (HHT). Field tests were carried out using the developed track condition monitoring system to show the effectiveness of the time–frequency analysis using HHT. Simulation studies and field test results showed that HHT can yield a good time–frequency resolution and that intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) can provide the detailed information of track faults.