Establishment of the Complete Closed Mesh Model of Rail-Surface Scratch Data for Online Repair

Abstract

Rail surface scratching occurs with increasing frequency, seriously threatening the safety of vehicles and humans. Online repair of rail-surface scratches on damaged rails with scratch depths >1 mm is of increased importance, because direct rail-replacement has the disadvantages of long operation time, high manpower and high material costs. Advanced online repair of rail-surface scratch using three-dimensional (3D) metal printing technology such as laser cladding has become an increasing trend, desperately demanding a solution for the fast and precise establishment of a complete closed mesh model of rail-surface scratch data. However, there have only been limited studies on the topic so far. In this paper, the complete closed mesh model is well established based on a novel triangulation algorithm relying on the topological features of the point-cloud model (PCM) of scratch-data, which is obtained by implementing a scratch-data-computation process following a rail-geometric-feature-fused algorithm of random sample consensus (RANSAC) performed on the full rail-surface PCM constructed by 3D laser vision. The proposed method is universal for all types of normal-speed rails in China. Experimental results show that the proposed method can accurately acquire the complete closed mesh models of scratch data of one meter of 50 Kg/m-rails within 1 min.

Review: Research on product surface quality inspection technology based on 3D point cloud

“…The data can be converted to the XZ plane reference system to focus on the change of the depth information z, which is convenient for the acquisition of the contour information. As shown in Figure 2, Guo et al 38 used the random sample consensus (RANSAC) algorithm to fit the contour shape of the rail geometric section, and used the distance threshold comparison to screen out the abnormal contour point cloud. Cao et al 5 proposed a dynamic interval fitting curve detection algorithm based on line-structured light.…”

“…Extraction and fitting of point cloud contour. 38 introduced M estimation and ADF registration distance error function for the interference of noise points on registration.…”

Intelligent Transportation Related Complex Systems and Sensors

“…Reference [ 21 ] aimed at bridging the research gap found in the field of rail surface scratching data, where only a limited number of studies have addressed the issue of complete closed mesh model. The paper proposed a model based on a novel triangulation algorithm relying on the topological features of the point-cloud model (PCM) of scratch data.…”

Development of Integrated Automatic System of Laser Cladding for Repairing of Polycrystalline Diamond Compact Bits

“…Its most important application is to repair high-value equipment, which can greatly save cost compared to buying another brand new, and, at the same time, the repaired work piece has at least the same performance to the original. Therefore, laser-cladding technology can be used in repairing the hard facing of turbine blade [2][3][4][5][6][7][8], forging die [9][10][11], as well as in various material processing industries for complex curved surface generating [12][13][14][15], and repairs of rail-surface scratch [16], artificial joints in medical treatment [17], broken gears [18], and worn sprockets [19].…”