Condition monitoring of railway track from car-body vibration using time-frequency analysis

Proper maintenance of railway tracks is essential to ensure railway safety. A track condition monitoring system was developed for the preventive maintenance of the track by installing the on-board sensing device in the in-service vehicles and monitoring the track condition by measuring the car-body acceleration. This paper describes the application of time-frequency analysis for the condition monitoring of railway tracks. Car-body acceleration simulated by a 10-DOF vehicle model, with a faulty track, was used to identify the track faults using Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT). Field tests were carried out using the developed track condition monitoring system to show the effectiveness of the time-frequency analysis using HHT. Simulation studies and field test results showed that HHT can yield a good time-frequency resolution and that intrinsic mode functions (IMFs) can provide the detailed information of track faults.