Abstract:

To achieve accurate identification and evaluation of the service state of heavy-haul railway lines, a heavy-haul railway line comprehensive inspection vehicle was designed and developed, integrating six major inspection systems: a track condition inspection system, a rail profile measurement system, a track geometry measurement system, a rail flaw detection system, a wheel-rail force measurement system, and a vibration measurement system. A positioning and synchronization system is employed to enable synchronized acquisition and correlation analysis of multi-source line-condition data, and to provide graded alarms for suspected defects. The results show that, since its commissioning in July 2023, the heavy-haul railway line comprehensive inspection vehicle, operating at speeds up to 80 km/h, has continuously collected multi-source data including track geometry parameters, surface inspection images, internal B-scan images, wheel-rail forces, and vibration signals, and has established a database of typical defects. By combining the positioning and synchronization system with a multi-source spatiotemporal mapping model, the system realizes automatic alignment and correlation analysis of inspection data, enabling accurate tracing of defect causes and reducing both false positives and missed detections. Furthermore, the proposed graded alarm mechanism for suspected defects supports differentiated responses such as speed restriction, reporting, and record-keeping according to exceedance levels, thereby ensuring train operation safety while improving both heavy-haul railway maintenance efficiency and train operation efficiency.

Key words: heavy-haul railway, comprehensive inspection vehicle, track status inspection system, positioning synchronization system, track defect