Study on automatic alignment algorithm in rail grinding of rail head profile

Rail profile alignment algorithm determines the amount of rail-grinding, the distribution of grinding heads, and directly affects the final grinding effect. The alignment algorithm based on the rail waist profile has been proposed. The paper studied the high accurate and automatic alignment algorithm based on the rail head profile. First, based on the characteristic information of standard rail head profile, searched for the residual characteristic information of the wear-rail automatically and decided working side or non-working side of alignment. Then, pretreatment method on characteristic information was used to confirm the rotation angle and translation amount. Finally, the top area and side area between the standard and wear rail-head profiles of not worn areas were applied to improve accuracy of alignment. And the two areas were used to determine the alignment effect. Compared to the rail-waist profile, the rail-head profile alignment algorithm can save half of hardware cost with machine vision-based rail profile measurement system. This proposed approach proved to be practical and feasible after it was applied in the rail grinding car.