Seok-Jin Kwon/Dong-Hyoung Lee/Won-Hee You
International Journal of Railway, vol. 1, no. 1, pp.1-5, 2008

Abstract : The railway system requires safety and reliability of service of all railway vehicles. Suitable technical systems and working methods adapted to it, which meet the requirements on safety and good order of traffic, should be maintained. For detection of defects, non-destructive testing methods - which should be quick, reliable and cost-effective - are most often used. Since failure in railway wheelset can cause a disaster, regular inspection of defects in wheels and axles are mandatory. Ultrasonic testing, acoustic emission and eddy current testing method and so on regularly check railway wheelset in service. However, it is difficult to detect a crack initiation clearly with ultrasonic testing due to noise echoes. It is necessary to develop a non-destructive technique that is superior to conventional NDT techniques in order to ensure the safety of railway wheelset. In the present paper, the new NDT technique is applied to the detection of surface defects for railway wheelset. To detect the defects for railway wheelset, the sensor for defect detection is optimized and the tests are carried out with respect to surface and internal defects each other. The results show that the surface crack depth of 1.5 mm in press fitted axle and internal crack in wheel could be detected by using the new method. The ICFPD method is useful to detect the defect that initiated in railway wheelset.

Keyword : Railway wheel, Axle, Surface damage, Internal defects