A channel rail gauge detection system of modern tram

Gauge is a very important parameter of the rail geometric state, the regular detection of the gauge value can effectively to assure operational safety of the vehicle. However, there are few researches and equipments for the detection of the channel rail gauge of the modern tram at present. Therefore, this paper proposed a channel rail gauge detection system based on the principle of laser triangulation. The system consists of photoelectric encoder, 2D laser scanner, ethernet switch, and data processing system. At first, the photoelectric encoder emit a TTL trigger the two 2D laser scanners to scan the left and right channel rail and obtain the outline data at the same time. Next, the outline data is transmitted to computer via ethernet switch, and then processing the outline data. The system adopt gaussian filter to reduce the system error and carry out an gauge point extraction algorithm to accurately calculate the gauge value. The experiment results demonstrated that the accuracy of the gauge detection system are limited to the ± 0.6mm range, the detection precision is excellent, and the detection system can be realized in gauge detection of channel rail.