Ultrasonic Inspection of Railroad Rails by Electromagnetic Acoustic Transducers (EMATS)

摘要

Describes the prinicipal elements, results and conclusions of a four-year program for the development of EMAT systems for the ultrasonic detection and characterization of potentially hazardous defects in railroad rails. Testing has shown that EMATs can be adapted for field testing, can detect all the serious types of defects at the required sensitivity level and may be more sensitive to two types of serious defects, the transverse defects and vertical split head defects, than currently available test methods.