Track geometry evaluation method based on vehicle response prediction

Testing of the running characteristics of railway vehicles requires well-defined boundary conditions like track geometry quality. Test sections with the same track geometry quality must lead to the same dynamic vehicle response (VR) forces. The state-of-the-art methods do not fulfil this important requirement for a track quality definition. Our proposed method for track geometry assessment considers the vehicle/track interaction. ‘Representative’ transfer functions are used for the prediction of the vehicle reaction. Therefore, the results show a significant enhancement of the correlation between the track assessment quantities and the VR forces.