A Rail-Temperature-Prediction Model Based on Machine Learning: Warning of Train-Speed Restrictions Using Weather Forecasting

Predicting the rail temperature of a railway system is important for establishing a rail management plan against railway derailment caused by orbital buckling. The rail temperature, which is directly responsible for track buckling, is closely related to air temperature, which continuously increases due to global warming effects. Moreover, railway systems are increasingly installed with continuous welded rails (CWRs) to reduce train vibration and noise. Unfortunately, CWRs are prone to buckling. This study develops a reliable and highly accurate novel model that can predict rail temperature using a machine learning method. To predict rail temperature over the entire network with high-prediction performance, the weather effect and solar effect features are used. These features originate from the analysis of the thermal environment around the rail. Precisely, the presented model has a higher performance for predicting high rail temperature than other models. As a convenient structural health-monitoring application, the train-speed-limit alarm-map (TSLAM) was also proposed, which visually maps the predicted rail-temperature deviations over the entire network for railway safety officers. Combined with TSLAM, our rail-temperature prediction model is expected to improve track safety and train timeliness.