Train-Induced Vibration Monitoring of Track Slab under Long-Term Temperature Load Using Fiber-Optic Accelerometers

Abstract

The train-induced vibration response provides a flexible solution for the real-time monitoring deformation of high-speed railway track slab in actual operation. This paper proposes a long-term real-time monitoring method for track slab deformation based on wavelet packet energy (WPE) using fiber optic accelerometers to record train-induced vibration. We found that the vibration response law of track slab deformation could be established by using the WPE of the frequency band covering the first- and second-order frequencies induced by the adjacent carriages. A field test was carried out for more than one year on the Beijing–Shanghai high-speed railway to investigate the train-induced vibration response law of track slab that was continuously deformed under a long-term temperature load. The maximum values of the WPE characteristic index appeared in winter and summer, and they were positively correlated with the temperature difference between the air environment and the track slab under the daily temperature load. These results were demonstrated to be consistent with the track slab deformation law for long-term and daily temperature loads. The novel method based on fiber optic accelerometers and WPE provides a new method for the long-term and real-time monitoring of track slab deformation.