Rail crack monitoring based on Tsallis synchrosqueezed wavelet entropy of acoustic emission signals: A field study

This article focuses on the rail crack monitoring using acoustic emission technique in the field typically with complex cracking conditions and high operational noise. A novel crack monitoring strategy based on Tsallis synchrosqueezed wavelet entropy was developed, where synchrosqueezed wavelet transform was introduced to explore the time–frequency characteristics of acoustic emission signals and Tsallis entropy was adopted to quantify the local variation of acoustic emission wavelet coefficients more accurately. The mother wavelet of synchrosqueezed wavelet transform and three key parameters of time-Tsallis synchrosqueezed wavelet entropy, including characteristic frequency band, non-extensive parameter, and time window length, were appropriately determined. The performance of the strategy was validated through field tests with an incipient rail crack and trains running at operating speeds. Time-Tsallis synchrosqueezed wavelet entropy efficiently detected and located the crack by extracting the crack-related transients in acoustic emission signals that were easily submerged in the operational noise. Synchrosqueezed wavelet transform further helped to analyze the mechanisms of these crack-related transients, which were distinguished to be either crack propagation or impact. The experimental results demonstrated that the crack monitoring strategy proposed is able to detect both surface and internal rail cracks even in the noisy environment, highlighting its potential for field applications.