Tuesday, March 18, 2014

Techniques Used In Rail Inspection

By Gwen Lowe


The second cause of railway accidents after human errors is rail track tragic failures. According to the researches done to determine railway transportation safety, most of these failures are facilitated by maintenance problems such as poor railway inspections. In order to reduce these problems and ensure people find it easier to maintain railways under the appropriate standards, there are various rail inspection techniques that have been put into use.

The use of high-tech ultrasound devices is among the main methods that aid in detecting flaws in rails. The devices work by passing on short ultrasonic pulse waves with center frequencies of less than one to fifteen MHz to the rails that are then send back into the device in form of an interface of the fault. The results would be displayed on the device in form of an amplitude signal that represents both the distance and the intensity of the received waves.

One other common technique is the distribution of eddy current on the rails. Normally, these ways are self-induced and creates magnetic field on such metals. Naturally, the stronger the magnetic field, the stronger the electrical conductivity in the metals being examined. When inspecting rails, the specialist would have to compare the initial electrical conductivity of such metals and the recent one to determine if such metals have faults.

Another method for detecting flaws in rails is the use of radiography technology. The technology involves the transmission of electromagnetic radiation specifically x-rays on the rails. Since these rays moves at high frequencies, they would penetrate to the interior of the material, which in turn would create an image of such objects. The image obtained is used to determine the condition of such materials.

The use of magnetic particle inspection is also common. This practice is majored at detecting subsurface and surface discontinuities in ferromagnetic materials like cobalt, nickel and iron. It works by inducing a magnetic flux to the surface of metals. If the metal has some faults, the magnetic flux would leak since air cannot hold the same magnetic field per volume like metals.

Railway inspection cars come with the appropriate devices and technologies to aid in examining rails for flaws. These are equipped with transducers and probes on the boards that work in testing problems with railway mileage and other sight-related defects. Most of these cars move at a speed of more than forty-eight kilometers per hour.

Using electromagnetic acoustic transducers also plays a great role in the railway industry. Transducers use electromagnetic mechanisms to automatically generate certain waves when passed on conductors. These waves aid determine the existence of faults on such materials that ensures the appropriate measures can be taken.

Each time people aboard a train, their desire is to reach their destination safe. However, sometimes this do not turn as expected especially when the rails where such trains pass through are not poorly conditioned. In order to reduce these problems, people have researched various methods for inspecting rails, which aid in detecting flaws on time to ensure the appropriate measures are taken.




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