A wavelet approach for the detection of rail wheel flats

This paper presents a wavelet approach to overcome the difficulties in the on-board monitoring and detection systems of rail wheel flats using vibration signals. Signalaverage techniques and wavelet local energy average concept are employed in this approach. A Matlab-Simulink based dynamic simulation system was also developed for the modelling of wheel flats and track irregularities. The analysis of the numerical simulation results demonstrated that the method proposed in this paper is effective for the on-board monitoring of wheel flats of sizes smaller than the condemning limits.