Monitoring and early warning method for a rockfall along railways based on vibration signal characteristics

Rockfall disasters occur frequently in mountainous areas of western China, and the rockfall disasters along a railway line will seriously affect the safety and normal operation of railways, causing great economic and property losses. Existing rockfall monitoring and early warning methods still have shortcomings, such as accurate warning of single-point disasters and vulnerability to the natural environment. In this study, a rockfall test of a flexible safety protection net along the slope of a railway and a rockfall test of the railway track were carried out, and the vibration signals of the falling rock hitting the different sites of the protective net and hitting different positions of the rails were obtained. Using the signal analysis methods such as Fast Fourier Transformation and Short-Time Fourier Transform, the basic characteristics of the rockfall vibration signal and the vibration signal when the train passes and the propagation law of the rockfall vibration signal are obtained. Finally, a set of monitoring and early warning systems for rockfall disasters along the railway based on the analysis of vibration signal characteristics is established. The monitoring and early warning method has the advantages of all-weather, high-time, semi-automatic and high efficiency performance.