Railway ballast monitoring by means of DIP technique

The purpose of this study was to evaluate the reliability of a novel high-efficiency procedure for aggregate gradation determination of the railway ballast by means digital image processing technique (DIP). This new method is based on the “information” of high-resolution photographic images of the railway tracks and on specific algorithms, which allows to obtain the ballast aggregate gradation curve. The methodology has been applied to a new Italian railway line and allows finding the ballast particle size distribution for many track sections (straight, circular curve, transition curve). The results obtained by means the field observations were compared to those acquired from laboratory analysis. The research shows that the DIP could be implemented into the High speed track recording cars (diagnostic trains) together the laser and ultrasonic equipment (used for the rails scansions) for the Railway Infrastructure Monitoring (RIM).