Measurements of railway welded rail joints with a laser device

Abstract

One of the methods of joining rails is welding with termite, which guarantees a secure and stable connection of two sections of the rail without the need to use additional connecting elements and supporting the welded place. After joining (making a weld), appropriate mechanical processing of the joint is required in order to obtain the given rail head profile. The quality and diligence of the connection made has a major impact on safety, noise emission during the journey (wheel rolling) and the comfort of travelers. This article describes selected methods of making railway rail joints and presents the results of measurements with a portable laser measuring device Calipri C40 of the rail head within the welded rail joint made by thermite welding. An attempt to use this device for measurements of welded rail joints is shown, advantages and disadvantages as well as conclusions from the performed measurements are described.

Study of transitional phenomena in rail vehicle dynamics in relation to the reliability and operational state of the continuous welded rail track in terms of rail joints

“…As the operating speed of rail vehicles increases, these changes become more and more relevant to the long-term track behaviour [30]. The quantitative problem resulting from the number of joints and the limited number of measurement vehicles (track recording coaches -TRCs) prompt the search for solutions other than visual joint condition monitoring [17] or onsite laser measurements [2]. One such solution would be to monitor the condition of the track components through the use of so-called on-board monitoring.…”