An Evaluation of the Potential Use of Ballast Tampers for Dynamic Track Monitoring

This paper focuses on analysing the potential use of ballast tampers for dynamic track monitoring.Ballast tampers are ubiquitous in modern railway networks as essential maintenance devices for ballasted tracks, and expanding their utility would help dispensing with dedicated monitoring trains, which are complex and expensive.In order to test this possibility, a conventional tamper has been equipped with accelerometers and vibration data has been registered while the tamper travelled along lines 3 and 7 of the Valencia metro network.Data thus acquired has been then processed and analysed, and accelerograms and vibration spectra have been obtained.From this data it is possible to locate potential track defects that could be then identify through visual inspection, hence showing that conventional dynamic monitoring could be carried out by ballast tampers.Moreover, vibration spectrograms have been also obtained, which represent a more advanced approach towards dynamic monitoring that could help directly identifying defects from vibration signals, without subsequent visual inspection.Although this would require further research, it also proves that vibration data from ballast tampers may also be used in ongoing investigation into improved dynamic monitoring.