An alternative procedure to measure railroad track irregularities. Application to a scaled track

Abstract

In this paper an alternative procedure to accurately measure static railroad track irregularities is proposed and applied to a scaled railroad track. The purpose of this work is the determination of highly-precise measured data in short track segments that needs to be used as input in the validation of railroad computational models that are used for on-board railroad track measurement systems. The procedure consists of the use of a topographic total station combined with a postprocessing of the measured data that reduces misalignment errors and provide the analytical ideal geometry of the track together with its irregular geometry characterized in terms of the magnitudes of track gauge, vertical profile, alignment and cross level. Experimental results are compared to standard magnitudes of full scale tracks showing that real track geometry can differ from PSD-based predicted one. This supports the application of the proposed procedure for an accurate geometric determination of short track segments.