Out-of-Roundness Wheel Damage Identification in Railway Vehicles Using AutoEncoder Models

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This study presents a comparative analysis of three AutoEncoder (AE) models—Variational AutoEncoder (VAE), Sparse AutoEncoder (SAE), and Convolutional AutoEncoder (CAE)—to detect and quantify structural anomalies in railway vehicle wheels, such as polygonization. Vertical acceleration data from a virtual wayside monitoring system serve as input for training the AE models, which are coupled with Hotelling’s T2 Control Charts to differentiate normal and abnormal railway component behaviors. The results indicate that the SAE-T2 model outperforms its counterparts, achieving 16.67% higher accuracy than the CAE-T2 model in identifying distinct structural conditions, although with a 35.78% higher computational cost. Conversely, the VAE-T2 model is outperformed in 100% of the analyzed scenarios when compared to SAE-T2 in identifying distinct structural conditions while also exhibiting a 21.97% higher average computational cost. Across all scenarios, the SAE-T2 methodology consistently provided better classifications of wheel damage, showing its capability to extract relevant features from dynamic signals for Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) applications. These findings highlight SAE’s potential as an interesting tool for predictive maintenance, offering improved efficiency and safety in railway operations.