Monitoring the Dynamics of Railway Tracks by Means of the Karhunen-Loeve-Transformation

Maintenance of the quality of the railway track is crucial for the safety and the comfort of travelers on high speed trains. We intend to contribute a new method to detect deterioration of the track by means of a constant monitoring of the dynamic vehicle response to track features. In order to separate significant information from the enormous amount of data collected from measurements the Karhunen-Loeve-Transformation (KLT) is employed. It is shown that KLT is an efficient tool for information compression and for displaying the severity of a track failure. Our project was worked out in close cooperation with Deutsche Bahn AG (German Rail).