J102026 Track condition monitoring based on Shinkansen vehicle model

Railway tracks receive axle load by train runs and the track irregularities grow. As the track irregularity deteriorates ride comfort and running safety, track condition monitoring for maintenance is one of the most important tasks for railway companies. The Shinkansen track is measured by track geometry cars. A running frequency of the track geometry car is every 10 days. But it is difficult to check the Shinkansen track at designated time. This study proposes track irregularity estimation techniques from a car-body acceleration of vehicle body. As the acceleration measurement of a car body is much easier than that of an axle-box, a high frequency measurement is possible and it enables preventive track maintenance planning. An inverse analysis technique is applied to estimate the track irregularity. This technique is frequently utilized to determine unknown input signal (track irregularity) from a known output signal (car-body acceleration). A Kalman filter is used to estimate the track irregularity from observed car-body acceleration. It can be concluded that the track irregularity estimation in vertical direction is possible with acceptable accuracy for practical use with the proposed method.