Development of a phased array inspection system for the testing of railway solid axles from the end face in operational environment

摘要

The structural integrity of wheelsets used in rolling stock is of great importance to the rail industry and its customers. In the last 15 years, 33 deaths and 48 injuries have occurred in Europe alone because of train axle failures. Visual inspection, magnetic particle inspection and conventional ultrasonic testing are the current standard inspection practices used for manual non-destructive testing of axles. However, these inspection processes require removal of the wheelset from the wagon/locomotive bogie and the full disassembly of the wheelset in order to facilitate access. Phased array ultrasonic techniques can provide the required flexibility and inspection depth to make the inspection of train axles from the end face feasible without requiring the disassembly of axle and bogie. This paper presents the development work that was carried out to develop a phased array inspection system for the in-situ testing of solid axles with varying diameters. Inspection is carried out from the end face with minimum dis-assembly. The paper will describe the design of the solid axle scanner and its integration with the phased array inspection system (software, pulser-receiver and PAUT probe). Finally, experimental results obtained from the final system during field trials in an operational environment will be presented in detail.