There are millions of aluminothermic welds made each year to join the rails in Europe's rail network and millions are already in-service. Occasionally flaws develop during and shortly after welding that can lead to early failure and this can cause disruption to train services and costs to both the train operating companies and the maintenance operators. Although radiographic inspection is sometimes carried out, this is not very common, and the conventional ultrasonic procedure requires many probes and scans because of the complex geometry. As the welds are made by a casting process, these can be more difficult to inspect than joints made by other welding processes. Hence, the RAILECT project was conceived to provide a convenient means of inspecting the joints using a multiple phased array ultrasonic system. This paper describes the type of flaws of concern, the modelling of the ultrasonics, the practical realisation of a prototype system and the development of acceptance criteria.


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    Title :

    Automated ultrasonic phased array inspection of aluminothermic rail welds


    Additional title:

    Automatische Ultraschallprüfung von aluminothermischen Schienenschweißungen mit Gruppenstrahlern


    Contributors:
    Colombier, T. (author) / Rudlin, J. (author) / Jasiuniene, E. (author) / Kotsikos, G. (author)


    Publication date :

    2010


    Size :

    11 Seiten, 12 Bilder, 1 Tabelle



    Type of media :

    Conference paper


    Type of material :

    Storage medium


    Language :

    English




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