Funding:

• • Department of Transportation/Federal Railroad Administration 

  • Burlington Northern Santa Fe (BNSF) Railway (in-kind)

Purpose:

To develop a system able to track the vertical deflection of railroad ties autonomously at revenue speeds (e.g. 60 mph) or higher. 

Synopsis:

The Vertical Relative Rail Seat Displacement (VRRSD) is a metric indicative of bending failure of concrete and wood ties. The July 2013 derailment of the CSX freight train in NY was caused by deteriorated conditions at the tie-ballast interface. Tracking the vertical deflection of the ties can indicate deterioration of the concrete tie-ballast interface, which can result from various factors including tie bottom abrasion, ballast pulverization, and voids in the tie-ballast interface. UCSD is developing a system that can track the deflection of the ties in a completely non-contact manner during normal train operations. The idea is to use an array of air-coupled ultrasonic transducers operated in a pulse-echo mode and using special signal processing routines for real-time and accurate tie position measurements. 

Selected Publications: