Rapid and Precise Measurement Method for Track Static Geometry of Large-Span Bridge Railway

Track geometry is an important parameter reflecting the safety of bridge railway, which is of great significance for the structure control of railway track. The measurement of track geometry is an indispensable part of structural health monitoring for bridge railway. However, existing methods for track static track geometry measurement are inadequate in terms of accuracy and efficiency. In order to improve the measurement method, this paper proposes a rapid and precise measurement method based on IMU/odometer aided by multiple total stations, which has the advantages of high efficiency, high accuracy, and is less affected by the environment. The proposed method uses a track measurement trolley (TMT) integrated with IMU and an odometer to collect railway track data on the bridge, and multiple total stations are used to synchronously measure the three-dimensional coordinates of the TMT. After coordinate system registration and time synchronisation, the data are then fused using a filtering algorithm to finally obtain the static geometry of the railway track. The proposed method was validated on the NanSha Port Railway Bridge across the Xijiang River in Foshan, China, and the results showed that the proposed method can make a single on-orbit measurement of a 1000 m length of large-span bridge railway track within half an hour, with an accuracy on the order of millimetres. The proposed method has obvious advantages in terms of efficiency and accuracy and is therefore an effective new measurement method with practical significance.