Nowadays, wayside measurement systems of wheel-rail contact forces have acquired great relevance for the monitoring of rolling stock, especially for freight trains. Thanks to these solutions, infrastructure managers can check and monitor the status of rolling stock and, when necessary, impose corrective actions for the railway companies. On the other hand, the evaluation of contact forces is part of the rolling stock authorisation process [1] and a mainstone for the study of the running stability. The data provided by these measurements could give useful information to correlate the wear of the track with the frequency of applied loads, helping in the development of a better maintenance strategy of railway networks [2]. In this paper, the monitoring of vertical forces is based on the SMCV (Vertical Loads Monitoring System) method, where shear strains of the rail web are measured with a simple combination of four electrical strain gauges, placed on both sides of the rail web along each span. The research has identified self-diagnosis methods for the SMCV system to ensure the reliability and the quality of the measurements and to extend the knowledge of the system. The recorded signals have been processed and converted into easily interpretable physical quantities by means of MATLAB ® algorithm.

No abstract

This paper focuses on the estimation of damage contribution that each type of railway vehicle produces on the line Pescara - Ancona. The results of the numerical simulations provides fundamental information to understand the railway vehicle properties mostly influencing track damage mechanisms. The results have clearly shown the influence of the wheelset vertical forces on the damage indicators. The analysis of the specific contribution on damage by a specific railway vehicle will be particularly important to modulate track access charges by vehicle type. Moreover, simulation results will allow to adjust the unit maintenance cost of the line on the class of train, whose volumes are known.