Advanced Technologies and Approaches for the Condition Monitoring of Railway Transportation Infrastructure

Dear Colleagues,

Railway network is a key component of modern societies, enabling safe and efficient daily motion of passengers and goods while supporting sustainable transportation strategies. In recent decades, increases in travelling speeds, traffic volumes, and dynamic loads together with the progressive ageing of infrastructure assets, have posed major challenges to railway infrastructure management. In parallel, the rapid development of advanced sensing technologies, data acquisition systems, and digital tools has enabled and accelerated the widespread spread adoption of novel condition monitoring approaches. The integration of multi-sensor data, physics-based modelling, and data-driven techniques has opened new opportunities for the real-time and quantitative assessment of the health condition of railway infrastructure components, supporting predictive maintenance strategies and informed decision-making within asset management frameworks.

Within this context, the present Special Issue aims to collect the latest scientific contributions on advanced technologies and methodologies for the condition monitoring of railway transportation infrastructure.

We welcome original research articles and critical reviews that address theoretical, numerical, and experimental aspects, including (but not limited to) the following thematic areas:

   1. Bridge direct structural health monitoring:

       - environmental and operational variables treatment;

       - automatic identification of sensors fault;

       - structural anomaly detection and damage assessment.

   2. Bridge indirect structural health monitoring through on-board measurements:

       - modal parameters identification;

       - damage detection and localisation;

       - vehicle–bridge interaction modelling for monitoring purposes.

   3. Artificial intelligence applied to condition monitoring of railway network components:

       - machine learning and data-driven methodologies;

       - physics-informed and hybrid neural network approaches;

       - transfer learning and domain adaptation techniques.

   4. Development of cutting-edge solutions and technologies for novel sensing devices:

       - novel sensors concepts/designs and smart sensing devices;

       - energy-efficient solutions for monitoring systems;

       - ease of deployment, operation, and maintenance in real-world applications.

   5. Track degradation assessment:

       - physics-based and statistical models for ballasted and unballasted track degradation analysis and prediction;

       - structural health monitoring applied to slab track systems;

       - effects of transition zones on track degradation and mitigation strategies.

We look forward to your contribution!

Prof. Dr. Andrea Collina
Dr. Lorenzo Bernardini
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 250 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for assessment.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Infrastructures is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• railway infrastructure
• bridge condition monitoring
• drive-by monitoring
• direct monitoring
• SHM
• novel sensing devices
• track degradation
• data-driven approaches for SHM
• physics-informed NN