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Rail Safety Improvement through Enhanced Understanding of Ballast and Subgrade Interactions
Between April 2021 and April 2023, the Federal Railroad Administration sponsored a research team from The Pennsylvania State University to conduct a study on optimizing tamping maintenance. In this report, researchers examine the impact of various tamping parameters on railway ballast...
Laser Triangulation and Deep Neural Networks for Rail Safety Inspections — Phase 2: Framework for Isolating and Reporting Track Changes
This research builds upon previous FRA-funded studies using the LRAIL 3D laser triangulation scanning system and Deep Convolutional Neural Networks (DCNNs) to identify track health attributes. The focus lies on developing technology-agnostic methodologies for processing LRAIL data, catering to...
Feasibility Study of Raman Piezo-Spectroscopy as a Mobile Method for Measuring Longitudinal Rail Stress
The objective of this project was to investigate the feasibility of Raman and fluorescence piezo-spectroscopy as a mobile method to measure the absolute stress in rail. This study identified Raman and fluorescence-sensitive oxides on the rail surface that can be used as an in-situ passive sensor...
User-Centered Design for Railroad Automation: Phase I
This document is the final report for Phase I of a two-phase research project, “User-Centered Design for Railroad Automation (UCD-Rail),” to develop and demonstrate an improved interface between human operators and advanced automation in rail systems. Applying user-centered design methodology,...