Ultrasonic NDE of railroad tracks: air-coupled cross-sectional inspection and long-range inspection

Scalea, Francesco Lanza di; McNamara, John

doi:10.1784/insi.45.6.394.52890

Cited by 30 publications

(14 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…In the last decade, ultrasonic guided wave methods for rail defect detection have gained the attention of different NDT research groups around the world [30,31,32]. A detailed description on the use of ultrasonic guided waves for structural health monitoring of rails is presented in the next section.…”

Section: Historical Background 221mentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-Contact Ultrasonic Guided Wave Inspection of Rails: Next Generation Approach

Mariani

Nguyen

Zhu

et al. 2016

2016 Joint Rail Conference

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The University of California at San Diego (UCSD), under a Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) Office of Research and Development (R&D) grant, is developing a system for high-speed and non-contact rail defect detection. A prototype using an ultrasonic air-coupled guided wave signal generation and air-coupled signal detection, paired with a real-time statistical analysis algorithm, has been realized. This system requires a specialized filtering approach based on electrical impedance matching due to the inherently poor signal-to-noise ratio of air-coupled ultrasonic measurements in rail steel. Various aspects of the prototype have been designed with the aid of numerical analyses. In particular, simulations of ultrasonic guided wave propagation in rails have been performed using a Local Interaction Simulation Approach (LISA) algorithm. The system’s operating parameters were selected based on Receiver Operating Characteristic (ROC) curves, which provide a quantitative manner to evaluate different detection performances based on the trade-off between detection rate and false positive rate. The prototype based on this technology was tested in October 2014 at the Transportation Technology Center (TTC) in Pueblo, Colorado, and again in November 2015 after incorporating changes based on lessons learned.

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Section: Historical Background 221mentioning

confidence: 99%

Non-Contact Ultrasonic Guided Wave Inspection of Rails: Next Generation Approach

Mariani

Nguyen

Zhu

et al. 2016

2016 Joint Rail Conference

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“…2000 m, allowing also the possibility to check for the damage throughout the rail cross-section (Rose et al, 2004;Rose, 2000). Other guided wave based damage detection techniques on rails exploits reflection coefficient spectra (Lanza di Scalea and McNamara, 2003) and wave mode conversion signatures for various defects (Cawley et al, 2002;Wilcox et al, 2003). • Air coupled ultrasonic test methods.…”

Section: Overview Of Current Inspection Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…• Air coupled ultrasonic test methods. These techniques used non-contact ultrasonic sensors to monitor rails by analysing resonant standing waves (Lanza di Scalea and McNamara, 2003) and signal energy loss (Kenderian et al, 2001). • Acoustic emission (AE).…”

Section: Overview Of Current Inspection Techniquesmentioning

confidence: 99%

A new damage detection technique based on wave propagation for rails

Zumpano

Meo

2006

International Journal of Solids and Structures

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This paper presents a novel damage detection technique, tailored at the identification of structural surface damage on rail structures. The damage detection, proposed in this paper, exploits the wave propagation phenomena (P, S, Rayleigh and guided wave velocities) by identifying discrepancies, due to damage presence, in the dynamic behaviour of the structure. The uncorrelations are generated by waves reflected back to the sensor locations by the flaw surfaces. The peculiarity of the presented approach is the use of a time frequency coherence function for the identification of the arrivals of guided wave reflected back to the sensors by the damage surfaces.The damage detection methodology developed was divided into three steps. In the first step, the presence of the damage on the structure was assessed. In the second step, the arrival time of the reflected wave (or echo) was estimated using the continuous wavelet transform. Then, the detection algorithm was able, through a ray-tracing algorithm, to estimate the location of damage.A numerical investigation of two single damages was carried out. The damage was introduced on the railhead surface to simulate rolling contact fatigue defects. The results showed that the proposed methodology can be used successfully to localise the damage location, however, as expected, the localisation is strongly affected by the frequency range used. The results suggested that the separation and the characterisation of single modes are crucial for the identification of different types of rail defects. Further work is needed to establish the damage severity by relating the magnitude of the changes of the time frequency coherence to reflection and attenuation coefficients of each guided wave used and on the selection of the best range of frequency according to the type of damage to be identified.

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“…One of the reasons for slow inspection speeds using conventional NDT is the need for couplant between the transducer and the track, either liquid or dry couplant materials. EMATs have been used (2,3) or suggested (4) to measure both rail tracks and wheels by other workers and the use of non-contact ultrasonic measurements are still being investigated by a number of international research groups (5)(6)(7)(8) .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inspection of rail track head surfaces using electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs)

Dixon¹,

Edwards²,

Jian³

2004

insight

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Ultrasonic NDE of railroad tracks: air-coupled cross-sectional inspection and long-range inspection

Cited by 30 publications

References 7 publications

Non-Contact Ultrasonic Guided Wave Inspection of Rails: Next Generation Approach

Non-Contact Ultrasonic Guided Wave Inspection of Rails: Next Generation Approach

A new damage detection technique based on wave propagation for rails

Inspection of rail track head surfaces using electromagnetic acoustic transducers (EMATs)

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