Performance Evaluation of Track Curvature Sensor for Curvature Estimation in a Curved Section of Railway Tracks

Abstract

Active railway vehicles such as tilting trains and active steering bogies are being developed to improve the curve running performance of railway vehicles. In this case, a technology for sensing a curve and extracting curve information such as a curvature in real time is required. The existing railway curve detection technology has the disadvantage of requiring many calibration processes through test driving and being affected by running speed. In order to overcome these disadvantages, this paper proposes a very simple and efficient curvature estimation method. A curvature sensor prototype was manufactured and a test run was performed on the test track. As a test result compared with the track inspection data, the minimum deviation was 0.8%, the maximum deviation was 4.0% and the average deviation was 2.8%, showing good curvature measurement performance. It was also confirmed that the effect of the running speed was very small and the accuracy was high in the small curve with a large curvature. Therefore, the developed curvature measurement sensor is expected to be used very practically in the field of curvature detection and curvature extraction to control the vehicle in the curve section.