Vibration-based Longitudinal Rail Stress Estimation Exploiting Acoustic Measurement and Machine Learning

Safety is of principal concern of the railway industry, and track alignment irregularities can pose risks to the safe operation of trains.

The TRB IDEA (Innovations Deserving Exploratory Analysis) Program's Rail Safety IDEA Final Report 41: Vibration-based Longitudinal Rail Stress Estimation Exploiting Acoustic Measurement and Machine Learning explores an innovative approach for stress state prediction of continuous welded rail using contactless acoustic sensing and machine learning methods. An impulse-based experimental device was designed and deployed to excite multiple vibrational modes in rail simultaneously at one time.