Optical diagnostics of railway rail defects

Abstract

The safety of rail transport, including passenger traffic, largely depends on the timely diagnosis of the state of the rail infrastructure. To determine the state of metal structures, the method of acoustic emission (AE) is used. It is based on the registration of elastic mechanical vibrations arising in the material of the controlled object from a defect. The AE method is highly informative, but the interpretation of measurement results often causes difficulties, especially when studying complex structural elements. In this paper, it is proposed to use the digital image correlation (DIC) method to study the defects of railway rails using the acoustic emission method. Visualization of defects using the DIC method will make it possible to better interpret the results of inspection by the acoustic emission method and to establish the relationship between the size of defects and the parameters of AE pulses.