Laser–Air-Coupled Hybrid Noncontact System for Defect Detection in Rail Tracks

Abstract

Recent train accidents, with associated direct and indirect costs as well as safety concerns, have reaffirmed the need for developing rail defect detection systems that are more effective than those used today. One of the recent developments in rail inspection is the use of ultrasonic guided waves and noncontact probing techniques to target transverse-type defects. Besides the obvious advantages of noncontact probing, which include robustness and potential for large inspection speed, such a system can detect transverse defects under horizontal shelling or head checks. A rail inspection prototype based on these concepts and funded by the FRA is under development at the University of California–San Diego. This work reports on the status of the prototype development, including hardware and software development. Key features of the software are the feature extraction and the automatic pattern recognition algorithms. The laboratory results demonstrate the detection and sizing of transverse, surface-breaking cracks that extend for less than 20% of the rail head cross-sectional area.

Get full access to this article

View all access options for this article.

References

Federal Railroad Administration. Safety Statistics Data: 1992–2002. FRA, U.S. Department of Transportation, 2002.

Wilcox

Evans

Pavlakovic

Alleyne

Vine

Cawley

and Lowe

M. G.

Guided Wave Testing of Rail. INSIGHT—Non-Destructive Testing and Condition Monitoring, Vol. 45, No. 6 2003, pp. 413–420.

Rose

J. L.

Avioli

M. J.

Mudge

and Sanderson

Guided Wave Inspection Potential of Defects in Rail. NDT&E International, Vol. 37, No. 2 2004, pp. 153–161.

Lanza di Scalea

and McNamara

Ultrasonic NDE of Railroad Tracks: Air-coupled Cross-Sectional Inspection and Long-range Inspection. INSIGHT—Non-Destructive Testing and Condition Monitoring, Vol. 45, No. 6 2003, pp. 394–401.

McNamara

Lanza di Scalea

and Fateh

Automatic Defect Classification in Long-Range Ultrasonic Rail Inspection Using a Support Vector Machine-Based Smart System. INSIGHT—Non-Destructive Testing and Condition Monitoring, Vol. 46, No. 6 2004, pp. 331–337.

Bartoli

Lanza di Scalea

Fateh

and Viola

Modeling Guided Wave Propagation with Application to the Long-Range Defect Detection in Railroad Tracks. NDT&E International, Vol. 38, No. 5 2005, pp. 325–334.

Lanza di Scalea

Bartoli

Rizzo

and McNamara

On-line High-Speed Rail Defect Detection. Report DOT/FRA/ORD-04/16. Oct. 2004.

Lanza di Scalea

Advances in Non-contact Ultrasonic Inspection of Railroad Tracks. Experimental Techniques, Vol. 24, No. 5 2000, pp. 23–26.

Lanza di Scalea

Bartoli

Rizzo

and Fateh

High-Speed Defect Detection in Rails by Noncontact Guided Ultrasonic Testing. In Transportation Research Record: Journal of the Transportation Research Board, No. 1916, Transportation Research Board of the National Academies, Washington, D.C., 2005, pp. 66–77.

10.

Kenderian

Djordjevic

B. B.

and Green

R. E.

Jr . Laser-Based and Air-Coupled Ultrasound as Noncontact and Remote Techniques for Testing of Railroad Tracks. Materials Evaluation, Vol. 60, No. 1 2002, pp. 65–70.

11.

Kenderian

Cerniglia

Djordjevic

B. B.

Garcia

Sun

and Snell

Rail Track Field Testing Using Laser/Air Hybrid Ultrasonic Technique. Materials Evaluation, Vol. 61, No. 10 2003, pp. 1129–1133.

12.

McNamara

and Lanza di Scalea

Improvements in Non-contact Ultrasonic Testing of Rails by the Discrete Wavelet Transform. Materials Evaluation, Vol. 62, No. 3 2004, pp. 365–372.

13.

Lanza di Scalea

Rizzo

Coccia

Bartoli

Fateh

Viola

and Pascale

Non-contact Ultrasonic Inspection of Rails and Signal Processing for Automatic Defect Detection and Classification. INSIGHT—Non-Destructive Testing and Condition Monitoring, Vol. 47, No. 6 2005, pp. 346–353.