Keywords: moisture detection, railroad ballast, hyperspectral imagery, non-contact sensing.

One of the significant aspects of the railroad substructure that governs the performance of the superstructure is the moisture content of the ballast material. Although emerging non-destructive technologies (NDTs) are being employed to assess moisture content, these techniques are time-consuming and demand skilled operators. The current study proposes the use of hyperspectral imaging for rapid assessment of moisture content measurement in the ballast material. Experiments are performed for thirteen different moisture contents, and the reflectance and absorbance spectra are obtained. Results revealed that the spectral profile of dry ballast material is distinguishable from that of wet ballast material. However, the overall shape of the spectral profile for all the moisture contents was noticed to remain similar. The range of wavelengths for which the reflectance/ absorbance intensities varied from that of a dry sample is found to be 1375 nm -1550 nm. While a positive linear correlation was found for the absorption, a negative linear correlation was observed for the reflectance.

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