Identification of mud pumping defects in ballastless tracks based on GWO-VMD
QI Weizhi
LI Zaiwei
HONG Jian
Abstract：To address the high cost,long duration,and low efficiency associated with identifying mud pumping defects,this study proposes a novel identification method that integrates Grey Wolf Optimiza-tion(GWO)with Variational Mode Decomposition(VMD).First,statistical analysis of mud pumping occurrences is conducted to determine the typical length of affected sections in ballastless tracks.Then,based on track irregularity data collected by dynamic inspection vehicles,the performance of Empirical Mode Decomposition(EMD),Wavelet Decomposition(WD),and VMD in decomposing ir-regularity signals in mud-pumping areas is compared.Additionally,the effectiveness of several intelli-gent optimization algorithms,including Sparrow Search Algorithm(SSA),Artificial Bee Colony(ABC),Whale Optimization Algorithm(WOA),Particle Swarm Optimization(PSO),and GWO,in adaptively selecting the key parameters k and α of VMD is evaluated.The proposed GWO-VMD method is employed to decompose the measured track irregularity data,and the characteristics of the resulting Intrinsic Mode Functions(IMFs)are analyzed.The kurtosis values of the IMFs are used as feature vectors,and a maximum likelihood function based on envelope spectrum entropy is calculated to determine the defect identification threshold,which is found to be 3.51.Finally,the effectiveness of the GWO-VMD model is validated through a case study.The results indicate that each IMF compo-nent derived from GWO-VMD decomposition of track irregularity data exhibits distinct frequency and amplitude characteristics,corresponding to different spatial scale information.Compared with on-site defect data,the GWO-VMD method achieves an identification accuracy exceeding 90%,enabling ef-fective localization and detection of mud pumping defects in ballastless tracks.The findings support re-fined service condition management of ballastless tracks and provide technical guidance for"condition-based maintenance"of high-speed railway lines.
Keywords：railway engineeringballastless trackmud pumpingtrack irregularityVariational Mode Decomposition(VMD)defect identification
Publication Date：2025-04-30
Online Publishing Date：2025-08-15(First online date of this platform, not the publication date of the document)
Pages：12( 123-134 )