Keywords: squat, sound, algorithm, ARRoW, wheel-rail interaction, sound measurement.

For infrastructure managers, timely correction of rail defects is a very important issue. Late detection of defects can lead to high maintenance costs or worse, failure of the track. Therefore, the railway network owner wants to detect damage as early as possible. One common defect type is the so-called squat. Unfortunately, current techniques, such as ultrasound measurements or visual inspection, which are used to detect squats, are not capable of detecting squats early or in a cost-effective way. There is thus a need for an alternative way to detect squats.

An alternative approach has been tested and has enhanced our rail track monitoring system ARRoW to detect squats by means of sound measurements in close proximity to the wheel/rail contact area. Often, one can hear the wheel driving over a squat even before the squat can be detected in any other way. This noise a squat produces is very characteristic and can be clearly distinctive from 'regular' rolling noise. This sound is characterized to develop an algorithm that can detect squats. This algorithm is applied in a pilot study and its performance evaluated.

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