A study on wavelet analysis of railway track geometry

Year 2025, Volume: 6 Issue: 2, 50 - 55, 16.12.2025

Murat Vergi Taciroğlu , Hakan Işıker

https://doi.org/10.53635/jit.1746351

Abstract

Repeated train passages and environmental conditions cause deterioration of the geometric conditions of railway lines. When track geometry graphs are examined, it is seen that railway tracks have a rough, wavy form due to geometric deterioration. The wavy form of the track geometry contains many geometric defects of different wavelengths. However, these defects cannot be accurately detected with assessments based on threshold values specified in standards such as EN 13848. In this study, an approach based on the wavelet analysis method is proposed to determine geometric defects of different wavelengths in track geometry. For this purpose, the frequency spectrum of the measured longitudinal level data was first plotted and the highest frequency values were determined. The obtained frequency values were used to generate “Mexican Hat” functions, making the geometric data suitable for wavelet analysis. In the final stage, the locations of defects of different wavelengths were determined based on their frequencies as a result of the analysis. The results show that geometric defects of different wavelengths that cannot be detected by tolerance-based assessment methods in track geometry graphs can be detected along with their locations using the wavelet analysis method.

Keywords

Track geometry , Wavelet analysis , Mexican hat , Longitudinal level

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