Quantification of Rolling Contact Fatigue Cracks in Rails Based on Eddy Current Pulsed Thermography with Skewness Feature

doi:10.3901/JME.2021.18.075

Abstract

Abstract: The long-term pressure and impact load brought by the interaction between wheels and tracks would cause Rolling Contact Fatigue (RCF) cracks on the rail surface and sub-surface. RCF cracks usually propagate along the surface of the rail and the direction perpendicular to the rolling surface of the rail. Conventional Non-destructive Testing (NDT) methods are difficult to quantify the three-dimensional shape and size of cracks. To overcome this challenge, a novel RCF crack quantification method is proposed, which utilizes skewness feature extracted from the RCF crack area's thermal videos. To validate the proposed method, multiple specimens with real RCF cracks have been prepared, and the location, direction, and depth of individual RCF cracks have been obtained through industrial Computer Tomography (CT) scanning for comparison. According to experimental results, the crack angle on the rail surface represented by the skewness is linearly related to the results obtained by CT, and the correlation coefficient is about 0.97. The correlation coefficient between the spatial propagation angle of cracks inside the rail calculated by the skewness and that in the CT is approximately 0.85. The correlation coefficient between the closed crack length value of the rail represented by the skewness and the results of CT is about 0.94. The skewness value has an approximately linear relationship with the corresponding crack depth, and the correlation coefficient reaches 0.98. The above results show that the proposed method can effectively realize the quantitative evaluation of RCF cracks. It also indicates that ECPT has broad application prospects in early diagnosis, quantitative evaluation, visualization, and in-situ inspection of RCF cracks.

Key words: rolling contact fatigue cracks, eddy current pulsed thermography, industrial computed tomography, defect quantification

CLC Number:

TG156

YAN Yan, LIU Yi, ZHU Junzhen, MIAO Ling, CHEN Xiaotian, ZHOU Yu, LU Yanping, GAO Bin, TIAN Guiyun. Quantification of Rolling Contact Fatigue Cracks in Rails Based on Eddy Current Pulsed Thermography with Skewness Feature[J]. Journal of Mechanical Engineering, 2021, 57(18): 75-85.

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