A Simulation Investigation on Track Buckling to Avoid Derailments

These days, one of the main causes of railway accidents is buckling of steel rails. Railway networks are currently facing a serious issue with considerable asset losses due to extreme heat-induced railway track buckling. Rail safety will be significantly increased if buckled track portions are identified and reported before a train arrives at these sites. The goal of this research is to illustrate the approach for fiber-optic sensing systems to detect rail buckling using a simulation examination. An ANSYS Workbench model is created, and FEM analysis is carried out, in order to examine the analysis of rail buckling. In order to ascertain the deformation of the rail track at various temperatures, for which appropriate force and displacement were computed and applied during the static structural analysis, this work focuses on steady-state thermal and static analysis. From computational analysis of finite element analysis for range of temperatures between 25°C to 80°C we observe that there is an internal stress created inside the track which actually makes the track change its geometry. The obtained result from ANSYS is converted into equivalent wavelength shift for few temperatures. Using the Grating MOD optical tool, the Fibre Bragg Grating (FBG) sensor is designed and simulated.