Detection of railway track squats by using bogie acceleration measurement

The railway track squat is one of the most dangerous track defects, it causes large dynamic contact force at the wheel-rail interface, leading to fast deterioration of the track, bring significant harm to the safety of the passengers. Early detection of such defects is very important for timely maintenance. In this paper, a squats detection method based on bogie acceleration (BA) measurement is presented. A simulation model with acceleration sensors is set up in the SIMPACK simulation environment. Time-frequency analysis and wavelet packet decomposition are applied to analyze these BA data obtained from the simulation model. The effectiveness of the above approach is demonstrated by simulation results.