Railway structure monitoring solutions using fibre Bragg grating sensors

ABSTRACT

This paper analyses the implementation of fibre Bragg grating (FBG) sensors as vibration sensors along a rail in order to obtain usable signals of sufficient interest for weigh-in-motion and axle counting. Particular attention is also paid to the advantages of these new sensors. This study was completed by numerical analysis of the stress transfer caused by train passage to the track in order to better discern and understand the location and orientation of these sensors. Different data processing methods were tested to estimate the train speed and weight. The results obtained are compared to strain gauge data as well as train manufacturer data (for train axle loads) and video recordings (for train speed). A good agreement is observed between these different results, demonstrating the applicability of FBG sensors to monitoring applications.

KEYWORDS:

• Railway monitoring
• sensors
• rail deflection
• weigh-in-motion
• train speed calculation
• axle counting

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the partners (Alstom and Infrabel) for the fruitful discussions.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was financially supported by the INOGRAMS (Innovations for a Global Rail Management System) project (convention 7171) of Wallonia (Belgium) in the frame of the LOGISTICS IN WALLONIA competitiveness cluster. Christophe Caucheteur is an F.R.S.-F.N.R.S. Research Associate and recipient of an ERC Starting Independent Researcher Grant [grant agreement no. 280161 called PROSPER].