Prediction of Thermal-Induced Buckling Failures of Ballasted Railway Tracks Using Artificial Neural Network (ANN)

Abstract

This paper investigates the possibility for implementing machine learning-aided prediction in analyzing the buckling phenomena of ballasted railway tracks induced by extreme temperature. In this study, artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been developed to identify the relationship between various ballasted track conditions and outputs, namely safe temperature and buckling temperature. The variables included in the objective function of the optimization problems are the lateral resistance of ballasted track provided by ballast-sleeper interaction, torsional resistance provided by fastening systems, and misalignment of the track. Due to its complexity in parameter combinations, the objective of this study is to create predictive models with the aim of minimizing the usage of scarce resources. Thus, this paper is the first to develop a novel machine learning-aided prediction of railway track buckling due to extreme temperature. Comprehensively, all 353 datasets of the safe and buckling temperatures derived from previous finite element (FE) simulation results have been collected and trained. Note that the mean squared error (MSE) and the coefficient of determination ([Formula: see text] are considered to quantify the performance of the ANN architectures. The optimal ANN architecture with a very high rate of accuracy has been determined and highlighted. Thus, the suggested neural network model can be applied conveniently to help estimate safe and buckling temperatures of the complex track models in order to improve track conditions and thus prevent track buckling in summer.