With increased axle weight and faster trains, the need for routine inspection of rails becomes much more important. The approaches currently being used in the rail industry are either inspection trains, dual-purpose road/track vehicles or hand-held trolleys using ultrasonic, eddy current, alternating current field measurement (ACFM) or magnetic flux leakage sensors. The vehicle-mounted systems generally provide information on defect locations but less robust data about defect sizes, which can be provided by hand-held systems. In this research, a robotic system has been proposed for the detection and characterisation of rolling contact fatigue (RCF) cracks on in-service rail tracks, which is designed to locate and then systematically scan the defects to provide more detailed data on the cracks. The system consists of a mechanised trolley, an FS02N Kawasaki robot arm and a commercially available AMIGO ACFM system, supplied by TSC Inspection Systems. This paper outlines the experimental results when the trolley is stationary and the robot arm is used to survey the rail head. It has been shown that the proposed system has the potential to improve the quality of RCF crack characterisation and could be used to autonomously inspect the rail tracks.


    Access

    Access via TIB

    Check availability in my library

    Order at Subito €


    Export, share and cite



    Title :

    A robotic approach for NDT of RCF cracks in rails using an ACFM sensor


    Additional title:

    Ein Roboteransatz zur ZfP von Wälzermüdungsrissen in Schienen mittels eines ACFM-Sensor


    Contributors:

    Published in:

    Insight ; 53 , 7 ; 368-376


    Publication date :

    2011


    Size :

    5 Seiten, 9 Bilder, 2 Tabellen, 10 Quellen




    Type of media :

    Article (Journal)


    Type of material :

    Print


    Language :

    English




    A robotic system for non-destructive evaluation of RCF cracks in rails using an ACFM Sensor

    Rowshandel, H. / Nicholson, G.L. / Davis, C.L. et al. | British Library Conference Proceedings | 2011


    Detection and quantification of rail contact fatigue cracks in rails using ACFM technology

    Papaelias, M.P. / Roberts, C. / Davis, C.L. et al. | Tema Archive | 2007


    High-speed inspection of rails using ACFM techniques

    Papaelias, M.P. / Lugg, M.C. / Roberts, C. et al. | Tema Archive | 2009


    Modelling and experimental measurements of idealised and light-moderate RCF cracks in rails using an ACFM sensor

    Nicholson, G.L. / Kostryzhev, A.G. / Hao, X.J. et al. | Tema Archive | 2011


    High-speed inspection of rolling contact fatigue in rails using ACFM sensors

    Papaelias, M.P. / Roberts, C. / Davis, C.L. et al. | Tema Archive | 2008