Keywords: track conditions, monitoring, safety, wheel-rail interaction, wear.

One of the most important parts of railway maintenance is related to early track defects detection. This means that maintenance operations must be supported with a monitoring and surveying activities which must be performed on the track. Inspections can be performed using several methods: sensors mounted on special measuring vehicles or direct inspection performed by operators.

Inspection and monitoring activities are therefore an important part of the maintenance process and must be properly scheduled and integrated with the track operations in order to ensure safety and availability of the line.

Detection of defects is not enough to achieve an adequate level of service and safety, in fact problems can arise during the intervals between inspections. Therefore the monitoring activity must be used to estimate the condition of the track and the monitoring intervals that should be programmed also considering the evolution of the track condition.

The work, described in this paper, is part of the ACEM Rail European Project, to define an integrated monitoring procedure able to optimize the maintenance scheduling for a railway track. The project involves the development of several sensors in order to detect different defect typology. Sensors are installed on an old type passenger vehicle and on a freight vehicle in order to allow potential application to common circulating vehicles.

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