Research

Research

PID 7651: "Application of eddy currents to the detection of defects on rail tracks". Date of expirate: 31/12/2022

Research objectives

The general and interrelated problems, which are the safety of railway transport and the reliability of the railway system as a whole (reliability in the sense of carrying out its function in a planned manner), this project attempts to address an aspect of the non-destructive testing on rail tracks. More specifically, within the wide range of NDTs, this research aims to contribute to the application development of eddy current method (and related electromagnetic techniques) to detect defects produced by RCF and evaluate their damage, applying intelligent algorithms that allow an automatic inspection in service. For this, we propose the following objectives:

General objective

✅Contribute to the total quality of the railway system by studying the application of a non-destructive inspection system that allows detecting and evaluating the damage of rail defects caused by the RCF phenomenon.

✅Study the defectology associated with the FCR phenomenon in rails to know the relevant parameters to apply a non-destructive inspection by ECT and related electromagnetic techniques.

✅ Establish the dataset for training the artificial neural network.

✅Develop programming and implementation capabilities in the appropriate programming language for the requirement.

✅Contribute with a modern non-destructive inspection of rail tracks in service through the application of the ECT method, including signal analysis techniques that allow the identification of different types of defects and the evaluation of their damage automatically.

Dr. Javier Fava
Director