Ricerc@Sapienza

Increased standards of safety in railway transport require control of train loads on behalf of railway administration, in view of programmed maintenance and monitoring of wear and fatigue of rails. This paper presents a procedure that applies interpretative mechanical models to the modelling of time-histories of rail strains, in view of the identification of travelling loads. On comparing the model output to experimental time-histories, we verify their ability to describe satisfactorily the real response.

This paper deals with the identification of the weight of a train in motion, based on the measurement of the time-history of the response in terms of strains at the foot of the rail. The direct problem is initially addressed: the response of a rail modelled as a one-dimensional Euler-Bernoulli beam with constant properties, resting on a linear elastic foundation with viscous damping and subjected to a Dirac delta load travelling at constant speed is considered. For