Fault Detection in Railway Track Using Piezoelectric Impedance

In this thesis, piezoelectric transducers are incorporated in an impedance-based damage detection approach for railway track health monitoring. The impedance-based damage detection approach utilizes the direct relationship between the mechanical impedance of the track and electrical impedance of the piezoelectric transducer bonded. The effect of damage is shown in the change of a healthy impedance curve to an altered, damaged curve. Using a normalized relative difference outlier analysis, the occurrences of various damages on the track are determined. Furthermore, the integration of inductive circuitry with the piezoelectric transducer is found to be able to considerably increase overall damage detection sensitivity.