Ultrasonic guided wave monitoring of an operational rail track

An experimental monitoring system was installed on an operational heavy haul rail track. The system used two piezoelectric transducers mounted under the head of the rail to transmit and receive ultrasonic guided waves in pulse-echo mode and data were captured over a 2-week period. An artificial defect was introduced by glueing a small mass under the head of the rail at a distance of 370 m from the transducers. The size of the signal reflected by the mass varied as the glue joint deteriorated. The measurements were reordered to simulate a monotonically growing defect. The pre-processing of the captured time signals included averaging, filtering, phased array processing, dispersion compensation, signal stretching and amplitude scaling. Singular value decomposition and independent component analysis of the data were performed. Independent component analysis, with dimension reduction achieved by retaining only the larger principal components, produced the best defect detection. The defect signature was separated as an independent component, and the weight of this component increased monotonically. The results indicate that a transverse defect in the rail head could be detected and located at long range by a system comprising only two transducers. The variation of the signals due to changing environmental and operational conditions limits the size of defect that can be detected, but it is expected that even a relatively small defect, which is significantly smaller than the critical size, would be detected.