Comparison of approaches to assessing ballast layer contamination using ground penetrating radar

The railway ballast layer plays an important role in the functioning of the entire track structure as a whole, provides the connection of the rail-sleeper grid with the roadbed and its stability in the longitudinal and transverse directions. An increase in the contamination of crushed stone worsens the characteristics of the ballast layer, that leads to an increase in operating costs. The study is devoted to the comparison of various approaches to determining contamination using the ground penetrating radar method. Several basic ground penetrating radar attributes used to assess the contamination of the ballast layer are considered and compared on several operating sections of the railway track. An approach based on a multiple linear regression model is proposed, simultaneously taking into account several attributes, which allows for increasing the accuracy of determining contamination.