Using the geometric wheel-rail contact algorithms for fault detection in turnout areas based on the variable section characteristics of rails

Abstract

This paper presents a geometric wheel–rail contact algorithm suitable for fault detection in a railway turnout. It employs a dynamic profile sampling method based on the characteristics of the variable section rails in the turnout regions. This algorithm provides a fast and accurate method to identify the wheel–rail contact points in turnouts under different degrees of lateral shift and yaw angles. This method determines the contact point based on the minimum distance and can be applied quickly through the use of a moving window to scale the potential contact boundary within the rail width. The wheel–rail contact points and the geometric contact parameters in the internal rail that matched with the LMa and 60 N were virtually identical in both methods, which verifies the accuracy of the dynamic profile sampling model. A comparison of the different wheel–rail contact points and geometric parameters under different wheelset yaw angles in turnouts using the trace line and dynamic profile sampling methods shows that a trace method based on the assumption of equal rail sections is not applicable to turnouts, thus demonstrating the necessity of calculating the wheel–rail contact geometry in turnouts using the dynamic profile sampling method, which takes the characteristics of the variable sections into account.