FY16 Supplemental to Air-Coupled Rail Inspection Prototype Using Passive Approach

The main objective of this amendment is to explore and test the feasibility of exploiting the natural acoustic vibrations induced in the rail by the wheel-rail contact, to perform non-contact passive rail flaw detection at sustained speeds. The ultimate goal is therefore to adapt the current non-contact rail flaw detection system to sensing rail flaws in a passive manner (without active excitation). A further objective of the work is maintaining, as main targets of the inspection, the most relevant rail head defects, namely Transverse Fissures, Detail Fractures and Vertical Split Head Defects. At the same time, the utilization of the natural excitations (which occur at low frequencies) may enable increased coverage area beyond the currently targeted top half, to the entire rail head section.