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In this work, a new method has been proposed to accurately determine longitudinal force measurement in continuous welded rail (CWR) with bi-directional fiber Bragg grating (B-FBGs) strain sensors (vertically and longitudinally installed according to the axis of rail). The response of B-FBGs has been theoretically analyzed by binding on CWR under different restrained conditions, where the coefficient of strain sensitivity of FBG is calibrated by its temperature sensitivity. Then the proposed sensor structure has been installed at two elaborately selected points on the subgrade on a Chinese high-speed railway in field. The experiment lasts for about 23 h. During the experiment, the rail temperature varied by about 7.8 °C and the differentials of relative value of wavelength change of B-FBGs of two points were 1.7850×10 −5 and 1.4969×10 −5 . The maximum difference between the experimental and theoretical results is 13.8 kN. The experimental results agree with the theoretical analysis very well. To guarantee the measurement accuracy of over 95%, the ratio of strain sensitivity coefficients of two FBG sensors of B-FBGs structure at one test point shall be within 0.78∼1.22.

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A new method has been proposed to accurately determine longitudinal additional force in continuous welded rail (CWR) on bridges via hetero-cladding fiber Bragg grating (HC-FBG) sensors. The HC-FBG sensor consists of two FBGs written in the same type of fiber but with different cladding diameters. The HC-FBGs have the same temperature sensitivity but different strain sensitivity because of the different areas of the cross section. The differential strain coefficient is defined as the relative wavelength differences of two FBGs with the change of applied longitudinal force. In the verification experiment in the lab, the HC-FBGs were attached on a section of rail model of which the material property is the same as that of rail on line. The temperature and differential strain sensitivity were calibrated using a universal testing machine. As shown by the test results, the linearity between the relative wavelength difference and the longitudinal additional force is greater than 0.9999. The differential strain sensitivity is 4.85 × 10−6/N. Moreover, the relative wavelength difference is not affected by the temperature change. Compared to the theoretical results, the accumulated error is controlled within 5.0%.

In order to evaluate the health status of continuous welded rail accurately, a deduction on the FBG sensing principle has been made with regard to the temperature variation of test specimens under different constraint conditions. A long seamless rail testing solution and its on-site application are designed based on this deduction. According to the verification experiments of sensing principle inside, the effect of the reference temperature on the FBG temperature and strain sensitivity coefficient within −30°C~30°C is not higher than 0.05%; the maximum relative error of single point between the tested and theoretical results of test specimen under constrained condition is 3.2%; and the maximum relative error of slopes of fitted straight lines based on the tested and theoretical results within the entire test temperature range is 2.3%, verifying the deduced FBG sensing principle with regard to the test specimen under constrained condition. The maximum error of the longitudinal temperature force between the on-site tested results and calculated results in long seamless rails is only 6.1 kN, the corresponding rail temperature variation is 0.3°C, and the accumulated error is controllable within 5%.