Automated machine learning recognition to diagnose flood resilience of railway switches and crossings

The increase in demand for railway transportation results in a significant need for higher train axle load and faster speed. Weak and sensitive trackforms such as railway switches and crossings (or called ‘turnout’) can suffer from such an increase in either axle loads or speeds. Moreover, railway turnout supports can deteriorate from other incidences due to extreme weather such as floods which undermine cohesion between ballast leading to ballast washaway or loss of support under turnout structures. In this study, new intelligent automation based on machine learning pattern recognition has been built to detect and predict the deterioration of railway turnouts exposed to flooding conditions which is the scope of this study. Since the turnout system is very complex by nature, different features and smart filtering are explored to find the potential features for deep learning. Nonlinear finite element models validated by actual field measurements are used to mimic the dynamic behaviors of turnout supports under flooding conditions. The study exhibits that the novel recognition model can achieve more than 98% accuracy, yielding the potential capability to recognize and classify turnout support deteriorations facing extreme weather conditions which will be beneficial for responsible parties to schedule and plan maintenance activities.