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Applications of Low-Cost and Smart Mobile Devices for Railway Infrastructure Performance Assessment and Characterization

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Digital Railway Infrastructure

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Abstract

Railway infrastructures degrade due to numerous factors, leading to malfunctions, track irregularities and other faults that negatively impact the running behavior of trains and the normal railway operation. Railway infrastructure managers traditionally conduct visual inspections and use dedicated inspection vehicles for track monitoring, which are expensive and disruptive to railway traffic. To address this issue and following the recent advances in the capabilities of mobile devices, new approaches for railway track monitoring using low-cost systems have been proposed to assess and characterize the railway infrastructure. Low-cost solutions, such as smart mobile devices with embedded IMUs, can revolutionize railway monitoring and maintenance by reducing costs and improving efficiency. A short literature review on various low-cost and smart mobile applications for railway transport performance assessment and characterization is presented, mainly focusing of the use of low-cost and/or mobile IMUs as condition monitoring systems. A case study is also presented on measurements from a smartphone to evaluate accelerations inside a passenger train on an 11 km stretch. Among other aspects, the results evidence the strong correlation between the vertical accelerations and the longitudinal level of the track, particularly in terms of the standard deviation. These approaches have the potential to complement or replace dedicated inspection vehicles and provide early detection of track faults, leading to cost savings and improved safety and ride comfort for passengers. Such approaches can be integrated in monitoring systems to optimize railway operation and maintenance procedures with the use of big data, IoT applications, and AI techniques.

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Acknowledgements

This work was partially financed by: Base Funding—UIDB/04708/2020 and Programmatic Funding—UIDP/04708/2020 from the CONSTRUCT Research Unit—Institute of R&D in Structures and Constructions—funded by national funds through FCT/MCTES (PIDDAC).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratório Nacional de Engenharia Civil (LNEC), Av. do Brasil 101, 1700-066, Lisbon, Portugal

    André Paixão & Eduardo Fortunato

  2. CONSTRUCT, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, Dr. Roberto Frias, 4200-465, Porto, Portugal

    André Paixão & Rui Calçada

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  1. André Paixão
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  2. Eduardo Fortunato
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  3. Rui Calçada
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Correspondence to André Paixão .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. CONSTRUCT, School of Engineering, Polytechnic of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Diogo Ribeiro

  2. CONSTRUCT, Department of Civil Engineering, Faculty of Engineering, FEUP, University of Porto, Porto, Portugal

    Pedro Aires Montenegro

  3. Division of Structural Engineering and Bridges, Department of Civil and Architectural Engineering, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

    Andreas Andersson

  4. Department Mechanical Engineering and Construction, Universitat Jaume I, Castellón, Spain

    Maria D. Martínez-Rodrigo

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Paixão, A., Fortunato, E., Calçada, R. (2024). Applications of Low-Cost and Smart Mobile Devices for Railway Infrastructure Performance Assessment and Characterization. In: Ribeiro, D., Montenegro, P.A., Andersson, A., Martínez-Rodrigo, M.D. (eds) Digital Railway Infrastructure. Digital Innovations in Architecture, Engineering and Construction. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-49589-2_3

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