Track Geometry Estimation from Car-Body Motions of Railway Vehicle

Abstract

To enhance the safety and reliability of railway transportation, it is one of the most important tasks to check the track condition frequently and accurately. This paper describes a track condition monitoring technique using car-body motions. In an inverse problem to estimate track geometry in longitudinal level from vertical car-body acceleration and pitching rate measured by in-service vehicle, dynamic programming filter and Kalman filter were applied. Study results confirmed that proposed solutions can be used to estimate track geometry in level with desired precision.