Increased standards of safety in railway transport require control of train loads on behalf of railway administration, in view of programmed maintenance and monitoring of wear and fatigue of rails. This paper presents a procedure that applies interpretative mechanical models to the modelling of time-histories of rail strains, in view of the identification of travelling loads. On comparing the model output to experimental time-histories, we verify their ability to describe satisfactorily the real response. Then, given a time-history of rail strains, the travelling load is identified minimizing an objective function which measures the match between the experimental time-histories and the model response in terms of curvatures. The inverse problem is solved in two steps. First, the stiffness of the foundation is identified using a known load. Then, the unknown loads are determined by a least square procedure. An application to experimental data recorded on the foot of a rail is also presented. The identified train load is finally compared to the train loads as declared by the carrier, providing satisfactory results, with mean errors around 7%.

Rail-strain-based identification of freight train loads / Pau, A.; Vestroni, F.. - (2019), pp. 49-52. (Intervento presentato al convegno 14th International Workshop on Advanced Smart Materials and Smart Structures Technology tenutosi a Roma) [10.13133/9788893771146].

Rail-strain-based identification of freight train loads

A. Pau
;
F. Vestroni
2019

Abstract

Increased standards of safety in railway transport require control of train loads on behalf of railway administration, in view of programmed maintenance and monitoring of wear and fatigue of rails. This paper presents a procedure that applies interpretative mechanical models to the modelling of time-histories of rail strains, in view of the identification of travelling loads. On comparing the model output to experimental time-histories, we verify their ability to describe satisfactorily the real response. Then, given a time-history of rail strains, the travelling load is identified minimizing an objective function which measures the match between the experimental time-histories and the model response in terms of curvatures. The inverse problem is solved in two steps. First, the stiffness of the foundation is identified using a known load. Then, the unknown loads are determined by a least square procedure. An application to experimental data recorded on the foot of a rail is also presented. The identified train load is finally compared to the train loads as declared by the carrier, providing satisfactory results, with mean errors around 7%.
2019
14th International Workshop on Advanced Smart Materials and Smart Structures Technology
load identification, rail monitoring, rail strains
04 Pubblicazione in atti di convegno::04b Atto di convegno in volume
Rail-strain-based identification of freight train loads / Pau, A.; Vestroni, F.. - (2019), pp. 49-52. (Intervento presentato al convegno 14th International Workshop on Advanced Smart Materials and Smart Structures Technology tenutosi a Roma) [10.13133/9788893771146].
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Utilizza questo identificativo per citare o creare un link a questo documento: https://hdl.handle.net/11573/1300891
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