The effectiveness of distributed acoustic sensing (DAS) for broken rail detection

Abstract

Broken rails remain one of the main causes of railway accidents despite improved rail quality and inspections. Today signalling system track circuits are generally used to detect broken rails, however new signalling systems such as ETCS replace track circuits and therefore new methods are needed to detect broken rails. One promising technology is distributed acoustic sensing (DAS). This paper describes field tests carried out on DAS to evaluate its ability to detect broken rails and the moment when rails break. The testing showed that DAS has good potential for detecting broken rails in both scenarios. The paper describes the tests and results.