Influence of span-to-depth ratio on dynamic response of vehicle-turnoutbridge system in high-speed railway

For high-speed railways,the smoothness of the railway line significantly affects the operational speed of trains.When the train passes through the turnout on a long-span bridge,the wheel-rail impacts caused by the turnout structure irregularities,and the instability arising from the bridge's flexural deformation lead to a strong coupling effect in the vehicle-turnout-bridge system.This significantly affects both ride comfort and operational safety.For addressing this issue,the present study considered a long-span continuous rigid-frame bridge as an example and established a train-turnout-bridge coupled dynamic model of high-speed railway.Utilizing a selfdeveloped dynamic simulation program,the study analysed the dynamic response characteristics when the train passes through the turnouts on the bridge.It also investigated the influence of different span-to-depth ratios of the bridge on the vehicle dynamic response when the train passes through the main line and branch line of turnouts and then proposed a span-to-depth ratio limit value for a long-span continuous rigid-frame bridge.The research findings suggest that the changes in the span-to-depth ratio have a relatively minor impact on the train’s operational performance but significantly affect the dynamic characteristics of the bridge structure.Based on the findings and a comprehensive assessment of safety indicators,it is advisable to establish a span-to-depth ratio limit of 1/4500 for a long-span continuous rigid-frame bridge.

An improved YOLOv7 for the state identification of sliding chairs in railway turnout

The sliding chairs are important components that support the switch rail conversion in the railway turnout.Due to the harsh environmental erosion and the attack from the wheel vibration,the failure rate of the sliding chairs accounts for up to 10%of the total failure number in turnout.However,there is little research carried out in the existing literature to diagnose the deterioration states of the sliding chairs.To fill out this gap,by utilizing the images containing the sliding chairs,we propose an improved You Only Look Once version 7(YOLOv7)to identify the state of the sliding chairs.Specifically,to meet the challenge brought by the small inter-class differences among the sliding chair states,we first integrate the Convolutional Block Attention Module(CBAM)into the YOLOv7 backbone to screen the information conducive to state identification.Then,an extra detector for a small object is customized into the YOLOv7 network in order to detect the small-scale sliding chairs in images.Meanwhile,we revise the localization loss in the objective function as the Efficient Intersection over Union(EIoU)to optimize the design of the aspect ratio,which helps the localization of the sliding chairs.Next,to address the issue caused by the varying scales of the sliding chairs,we employ K-means++to optimize the priori selection of the initial anchor boxes.Finally,based on the images collected from real-world turnouts,the proposed method is verified and the results show that our method outperforms the basic YOLOv7 in the state identification of the sliding chairs with 4%improvements in terms of both mean Average Precision@0.5(mAP@0.5)and F1-score.

A Convolutional Autoencoder Based Fault Detection Method for Metro Railway Turnout

Railway turnout is one of the critical equipment of Switch&Crossing(S&C)Systems in railway,related to the train’s safety and operation efficiency.With the advancement of intelligent sensors,data-driven fault detection technology for railway turnout has become an important research topic.However,little research in the literature has investigated the capability of data-driven fault detection technology for metro railway turnout.This paper presents a convolutional autoencoder-based fault detection method for the metro railway turnout considering human field inspection scenarios.First,the one-dimensional original time-series signal is converted into a twodimensional image by data pre-processing and 2D representation.Next,a binary classification model based on the convolutional autoencoder is developed to implement fault detection.The profile and structure information can be captured by processing data as images.The performance of our method is evaluated and tested on real-world operational current data in themetro stations.Experimental results show that the proposedmethod achieves better performance,especially in terms of error rate and specificity,and is robust in practical engineering applications.

Study on wear characteristics and authorized limits of switch rails of high-speed turnout

Purpose-It is quite universal for high-speed turnouts to be exposed to the wear of the stock rail of the switch rail during the service process.The wear will cause the change of railhead profile and the relative positions of the switch rail and the stock rail,which will directly affect the wheel-rail contact state and wheel load transition when a train passes the turnout and will further impose serious impacts on the safety and stability of train operation.The purpose of this paper is to provide suggestions for wear management of high-speed turnout.Design/methodology/approach-The actual wear characteristics of switch rails of high-speed turnouts in different guiding directions were studied based on the monitoring results on site;the authorized wear limits for the switch rails of high-speed turnout were studied through derailment risk analysis and switch rail strength analysis.Findings-The results show that:the major factor for the service life of a curved switch rail is the lateral wear.The wear characteristics of the curved switch rail of a facing turnout are significantly different from those of a trailing turnout.To be specific,the lateral wear of the curved switch rail mainly occurs in the narrower section at its front end for a trailing turnout,but in the wider section at its rear end when for a facing turnout.The maximum lateral wear of a dismounted switch rail from a trailing turnout is found on the 15-mm wide section and is 3.9 mm,which does not reach the specified limit of 6 mm.For comparison,the lateral wear of a dismounted switch rail from a facing turnout is found from the 35-mm wide section to the full-width section and is greater than 7.5 mm,which exceeds the specified limit.Based on this,in addition to meeting the requirements of maintenance rules,the allowed wear of switch rails of high-speed turnout shall be so that the dangerous area with a tangent angle of wheel profile smaller than 43.68 will not contact the switch rail when the wheel is lifted by 2 mm.Accordingly,the lateral wear limit at the 5-mm wide section of the curved switch rail shall be reduced from 6 mm(as specified)to 3.5 mm.Originality/value-The work in this paper is of reference significance to the research on the development law of rail wear in high-speed turnout area and the formulation of relevant standards.

Parameters studies for rail wear in high-speed railway turnouts by unreplicated saturated factorial design

Rail wear is one of the main reasons for reducing the service life of high-speed railway turnouts in China. The rail wear characteristics of high-speed railway turnouts are influenced by a large number of input parameters of the complex train-turnout system. To reproduce the actual operation conditions of railway turnouts, random distributions of these inputs need to be considered in rail wear simulation. For a given nominal layout of the high-speed railway turnout, 19 input parameters for rail wear simulation in high-speed railway turnouts are investigated based on orthogonal design of experiment. Three dynamic responses(wheel-rail friction work, normal contact force and size of contact patch) are defined as observed values and the significant factors(direction of passage, axle load, running speed, friction coefficient, and wheel and rail profiles) are determined by two unreplicated saturated factorial design methods, including the half-normal probability plot method and Dong 93 method. As part of the associated rail wear simulation, the influence of the wear models and the local elastic deformation on the rail wear was separately investigated. The calculation results for the wear models are quite different, especially for large creep mode. The local elastic deformation has a large effect on the sliding speed and rail wear and needs to be considered in the rail wear simulation.

Experimental investigation on vibration characteristics of the medium-low-speed maglev vehicle-turnout coupled system

The steel turnout is one of the key components in the medium–low-speed maglev line system.However,the vehicle under active control is prone to vehicle–turnout coupled vibration,and thus,it is necessary to identify the vibration characteristics of this coupled system through field tests.To this end,dynamic performance tests were conducted on a vehicle–turnout coupled system in a medium–low-speed maglev test line.Firstly,the dynamic response data of the coupled system under various operating conditions were obtained.Then,the natural vibration characteristics of the turnout were analysed using the free attenuation method and the finite element method,indicating a good agreement between the simulation results and the measured results;the acceleration response characteristics of the coupled system were analysed in detail,and the ride quality of the vehicle was assessed by Sperling index.Finally,the frequency distribution characteristics of the coupled system were discussed.All these test results could provide references for model validation and optimized design of medium–low-speed maglev transport systems.

Turnout fault diagnosis based on DBSCAN/PSO-SOM

In order to diagnose the common faults of railway switch control circuit,a fault diagnosis method based on density-based spatial clustering of applications with noise(DBSCAN)and self-organizing feature map(SOM)is proposed.Firstly,the three-phase current curve of the switch machine recorded by the micro-computer monitoring system is dealt with segmentally and then the feature parameters of the three-phase current are calculated according to the action principle of the switch machine.Due to the high dimension of initial features,the DBSCAN algorithm is used to separate the sensitive features of fault diagnosis and construct the diagnostic sensitive feature set.Then,the particle swarm optimization(PSO)algorithm is used to adjust the weight of SOM network to modify the rules to avoid“dead neurons”.Finally,the PSO-SOM network fault classifier is designed to complete the classification and diagnosis of the samples to be tested.The experimental results show that this method can judge the fault mode of switch control circuit with less training samples,and the accuracy of fault diagnosis is higher than that of traditional SOM network.

Multi-point Contact of the High-speed Vehicle-turnout System Dynamics

The wheel-rail contact problems, such as the number, location and the track of contact patches, are very important for optimizing the spatial structure of the rails and lowering the vehicle-turnout system dynamics. However, the above problems are not well solved currently because of having the difficulties in how to determine the multi-contact, to preciously present the changeable profiles of the rails and to establish an accurate spatial turnout system dynamics model. Based on a high-speed vehicle-turnout coupled model in which the track is modeled as flexible with rails and sleepers represented by beams, the line tracing extreme point method is introduced to investigate the wheel-rail multiple contact conditions and the key sections of the blade rail, longer nose rail, shorter rail in the switch and nose rail area are discretized to represent the varying profiles of rails in the turnout. The dynamic interaction between the vehicle and turnout is simulated for cases of the vehicle divergently passing the turnout and the multi-point contact is obtained. The tracks of the contact patches on the top of the rails are presented and the wheel-rail impact forces are offered in comparison with the contact patches transference on the rails. The numerical simulation results indicate that the length of two-point contact occurrence of a worn wheel profile and rails is longer than that of the new wheel profile and rails; The two-point contact definitely occurs in the switch and crossing area. Generally, three-point contact doesn’t occur for the new rail profile, which is testified by the wheel-rails interpolation distance and the first order derivative function of the tracing line extreme points. The presented research is not only helpful to optimize the structure of the turnout, but also useful to lower the dynamics of the high speed vehicle-turnout system.

Dynamic Analysis of the Turnout Diverging Track for HSR with Variable Curvature Sections

The paper presents an analytical method of identifying the curvature of the turnout diverging track consisting of sections of varying curvature. Both linear and nonlinear (polynomial) curvatures of the turnout diverging track are identified and evaluated in the paper. The presented method is a universal one;it enables to assume curvature values at the beginning and end point of the geometrical layout of the turnout. The results of dynamics analysis show that widely used in railway practice, clothoid sections with nonzero curvatures at the beginning and end points of the turnout lead to increased dynamic interactions in the track-vehicle system. The turnout with nonlinear curvature reaching zero values at the extreme points of the geometrical layout is indicated in the paper as the most favourable, taking into account dynamic interactions occurring in the track-vehicle system.

The effect of track alignment irregularity on wheel-rail contact geometry relationship in a turnout zone

The irregularity is a key factor affecting the wheel-rail contact geometry relationship. In this paper, we calculated the wheel-rail contact points at typical sections and obtained the longitudinal variation of the wheel-rail geometry relationship with the trace line method. The profile of the key rail sections was matched by cubic spline curve, and the shape interpolation was realized in non-controlling sections. The results show that the roll angles at each typical section increases gradually with the enlargement of track alignment irregularity. When the flange contact occurs, the roll angle increases dramatically. Proper track alignment irregularity towards the switch rail improves the structure irregularity of the turnout.

Length optimization of straight line connecting turnout on main line in high-speed railway station yard

Taking the development of high-speed railway in China as background, and referring to the dynamic theory and wheel-rail contact mode, dynamic analysis model was established, considering the setting position of straight lines and running conditions of train in high-speed railway station yard. Using the established model, and choosing vehicle lateral acceleration and wheel suspension as the evaluation indexes, dynamic characteristic of vehicle traveling in turnout and adjacent area on main line was analyzed, and effects on travelling safety and stability of train aroused by length variation of straight lines were calculated based on analyzing the damping rules of vibration. The results show that, a certain length of straight lines can alleviate the vibration aroused in turnout and curve(turnout), length of straight lines connecting turnouts in different sections on main line was proposed to meet the demand of traveling stability, and shortening or cancelation of straight line for the scale limitation of station yard has less influence on operation safety of train.

Dynamic Analysis of the Configuration of Lead Curves of Turnouts

A space coupling vibration model of the system of wheel and lead curve rails of turnouts is presented, in which the vibration of the straight and curved rails are taken into account and the variations of the elasticity of roadbed with the length of switch ties are considered. It is used to investigate the dynamic characteristics of different configuration of lead curve, such as circular curve, cubic spiral and high order transition curves. Based on the numerical analysis, some advantageous configurations of lead curve are suggested.

Turnout fault prediction method based on gated recurrent units model

Turnout is one of the important signal infrastructure equipment,which will directly affect the safety and efficiency of driving.Base on analysis of the power curve of the turnout,we extract and select the time domain and Haar wavelet transform characteristics of the curve firstly.Then the correlation between the degradation state and the fault state is established by using the clustering algorithm and the Pearson correlation coefficient.Finally,the convolutional neural network(CNN)and the gated recurrent unit(GRU)are used to establish the state prediction model of the turnout to realize the failure prediction.The CNN can directly extract features from the original data of the turnout and reduce the dimension,which simplifies the prediction process.Due to its unique gate structure and time series processing features,GRU has certain advantages over the traditional forecasting methods in terms of prediction accuracy and time.The experimental results show that the accuracy of prediction can reach 94.2%when the feature matrix adopts 40-dimensional input and iterates 50 times.

Influence of Track Parameters on Welded Turnout Group

By building the finite element model, the track parameters, including the ultimate longitudinal resistance, the length of the intermediate straight line, and the gap between spacer blocks, were analyzed for their influences on the longitudinal forces and displacements of the single turnout and turnout group, respectively. The results indicate that when the longitudinal resistance drops from 32 to 20 N/cm, the maximum additional longitudinal force of the turnout group increases by 19. 2%, and the maximum additional longitudinal displacement of the turnout group grows by 85.3% compared with 50.4% for the single turnout. When the length of intermediate straight line rises from 0 m to infinite, the maximum additional longitudinal force decreases by 38.8%, and the maximum additional longitudinal displacement by 80.3%.

Occasional Forces and Displacements of Longitudinally Coupled Ballastless Jointless Turnout on Bridges

For the longitudinally coupled baUastless turnout on Leida bridge on Wuhan-Guangzhou passenger dedicated line （PDL） in China, a turnout （cross over）-track slab-bridge deck-pier integrated finite element model was established, in which two No. 18 jointless turnouts with movable frogs in form of crossover, longitudinally coupled ballastless track, bridges and piers were regarded as one system. Based on this model, the additional forces and displacement regularities of turnouts, track slab, bridges and piers under occasional loading were analyzed, and the effect of occasional loading position was researched. The results show that slab breaking is more influential on the longitudinal force and deformation of the whole system than rail breaking, that slab breaking on one line could deteriorate both the slab force on another line and the forces exerted on the piers and fastener components, and that a great slab force at the left end of the continuous bridge expansion joint should be particularly avoided in design.

Computational Modeling of Government Policy to Attain Long-Term Higher Voter Turnout for Sustainable Democracy

People power is the fundamental concept of democracy and power of the people is exercised though voting. People decide who should be elected to make decisions for them. However, if people do not properly participate in the voting process and only two-thirds of all eligible voters participate in an election, the democratic institution loses its credibility and becomes vulnerable. This paper investigates various changes in voting institutions throughout the USAwith a simulation model that analyzes the efficacy of such methods to attain higher voter turnout.

Concurrence and Turnout Effect of Reforms on Electoral Processes in Mexico

Since the 1990s, the turnout in electoral processes has decreased, taking into account the Mexican context with its democratic transition, this decrease started after the 1994 federal election. The drop in turnout in federal elections had its lowest figure during the midterm elections of 2003, it picked up during the electoral process of 2009 and kept the same level of 2012. The change in the electoral turnout pattern for the federal elections in Mexico after 2009 can be explained as the combined effect of the electoral cycle and the concurrence between federal and local elections. Beginning from the hypothesis that there is a close link between institutions and contexts, the purpose of this study is to prove with the analysis of the electoral processes from 1997 to 2012, the effect of the electoral reforms--specifically the one in Article 116 of the Constitution in 2007-on turnout for federal elections of 2009 and 2012.

YOLO-VSI: An Improved YOLOv8 Model for Detecting Railway Turnouts Defects in Complex Environments

Railway turnouts often develop defects such as chipping,cracks,and wear during use.If not detected and addressed promptly,these defects can pose significant risks to train operation safety and passenger security.Despite advances in defect detection technologies,research specifically targeting railway turnout defects remains limited.To address this gap,we collected images from railway inspectors and constructed a dataset of railway turnout defects in complex environments.To enhance detection accuracy,we propose an improved YOLOv8 model named YOLO-VSS-SOUP-Inner-CIoU(YOLO-VSI).The model employs a state-space model(SSM)to enhance the C2f module in the YOLOv8 backbone,proposed the C2f-VSS module to better capture long-range dependencies and contextual features,thus improving feature extraction in complex environments.In the network’s neck layer,we integrate SPDConv and Omni-Kernel Network(OKM)modules to improve the original PAFPN(Path Aggregation Feature Pyramid Network)structure,and proposed the Small Object Upgrade Pyramid(SOUP)structure to enhance small object detection capabilities.Additionally,the Inner-CIoU loss function with a scale factor is applied to further enhance the model’s detection capabilities.Compared to the baseline model,YOLO-VSI demonstrates a 3.5%improvement in average precision on our railway turnout dataset,showcasing increased accuracy and robustness.Experiments on the public NEU-DET dataset reveal a 2.3%increase in average precision over the baseline,indicating that YOLO-VSI has good generalization capabilities.

9号道岔区铺设减振垫浮置板的行车安全性及舒适性研究

地铁道岔区在基本轨、尖轨处以及道岔钢轨接头处存在大量钢轨不连续地段,轮轨相互作用强烈,轨道系统振动明显,减振垫浮置板轨道作为一种高等减振措施已应用于地铁线路道岔区。为探究减振垫浮置板应用于9号道岔的适用性,并作为减振地段与普通无砟轨道的过渡段的可行性,以某地铁高架9号道岔为研究对象,建立桥上道岔三维有限元模型,仿真分析地铁B型车在120 km/h直向过岔和30 km/h侧向过岔的情况下,列车的行车安全性、舒适性以及轨下结构形变。对比在9号单开道岔区域设置的2种刚度过渡方式的优劣及其减振效果,较为系统地论证了在9号道岔区域铺设减振垫浮置板的可行性。研究结果表明:1)列车通过铺设减振垫浮置板的9号道岔区域时,浮置板位移极值出现在转辙区域和心轨区域,最大位移出现在尖轨位置,可增大尖轨处单板橡胶垫支承刚度,以保证轨道结构变形均匀;2)列车逆向侧向通过设置过渡段的减振垫浮置板道岔区时,2级过渡方式的车体最大垂向加速度、最大横向加速度、最大脱轨系数、最大轮重减载率、轨道刚度变化率以及减振效果等指标均优于1级过渡方式;3)在道岔区铺设减振垫浮置板,列车直向和侧向通过时的行车安全性和舒适性均能满足相关评价指标,且2级过渡方式更优。研究结果可为后续道岔区减振设计研究提供一定的理论参考。

基于参数优化VMD和改进LSSVM的道岔故障诊断方法

为了解决道岔设备智能故障诊断中特征指标难以提取以及模型训练时间较长的问题,以ZDJ9型转辙机带动的道岔设备为研究对象,以转辙机功率曲线为数据基础,提出一种基于参数优化变分模态分解(Variational Mode Decomposition,VMD)和改进最小二乘支持向量机(Least Squares Support Vector Machines,LSSVM)的道岔故障诊断方法。首先,采用鲸鱼优化算法(Whale Optimization Algorithm,WOA)优化VMD参数,得到模态(Intrinsic Mode Functions,IMF)分量个数和惩罚因子的最优参数组合。其次,计算IMF分量与功率曲线的相关系数,优选相关性较大的前3阶IMF分量,并计算功率谱熵、模糊熵及包络熵值,建立多特征融合样本数据库。最后,针对麻雀搜索算法(Sparrow Search Algorithm,SSA)易陷入局部最优的问题,通过改进Tent混沌映射初始化策略随机生成种群,正余弦算法(Sine Cosine Algorithm,SCA)更新追随者的位置,并采用改进SSA优化LSSVM算法的惩罚因子和核函数方差,构建基于TSSSA-LSSVM的道岔故障诊断模型。实验结果表明:所提道岔故障诊断方法是可行的,采用多特征融合能够更加全面地提取道岔典型故障特征,反映道岔的真实运行状态,提高了故障诊断准确率,而且较TSSSA-SVM,PSO-LSSVM,GWO-LSSVM以及SSA-LSSVM等方法具有较高的故障诊断准确率、召回率以及较低的漏报率,减少了模型训练时间,完全满足现场道岔故障导向安全的原则,具有更好的故障诊断性能,对现场道岔设备的故障维修具有一定的指导意义。