Acoustic Roughness Measurement of Railhead Surface Using an Optimal Sensor Batch Algorithm

Contact and friction between wheel and rail during train operation is the main cause of the rolling noise for which railways are known. Therefore, it is necessary to accurately measure the surface roughness of wheels and rails to monitor railway noise and predict noise around tracks. Conventional systems developed to measure surface roughness have large deviations in measured values or low repeatability. The recently developed automatic mobile measurement platform known as Auto Rail Checker (ARCer) uses three displacement sensors to reduce measurement deviation and increase the accuracy of existing systems. This paper proposes enhancing the chord offset synchronization algorithm applied to the existing ARCer for high measurement precision with only two displacement sensors. As a result, when the two sensor-based measurement algorithm was applied, the spectrum level at λ = 0.314 m, the wavelength amplification associated with wheel diameter, was reduced to at least 6 dB in comparison with that of the three sensors based algorithm. We also verified the accuracy of the proposed batch algorithm through a field test on an operating rail track with a corrugated rail surface.