Proceedings of the National Seminar & Exhibition

on Non-Destructive Evaluation
NDE 2011, December 8-10, 2011

STUDIES ON FEASIBILITY OF ULTRASONIC PHASED ARRAY IN RAIL INSPECTION

Girish.N.Namboodiri1, Krishnan Balasubramaniam2, T.Balasubramanian1 and G.Jothinathan2

1
National Institute of Technology, Tiruchirappalli
2
Indian Institute of Technology, Madras

ABSTRACT
Phased Array (PA) Ultrasonics which performs electronic and sectorial scanning could be used for detection and
sizing of defects in rails. The analysis of PA images concentrates on defects that are internal and volumetric in rail,
which is one of the most critical components in the transportation field. Failure in rail welds is an on-going concern
for rail safety. Fatigue fracture is usually the most common cause of rail failures. These fractures are formed due to the
imperfections present in the material and also due to crack formations when in-service. A means to detect flaws using
phased array ultrasonic techniques promises to minimize catastrophic failure and provide paths to perform preventative
maintenance. It also provides a quantitative analysis of the severity of the defects, including sizing and classification
of the defect so as to support a decision of accepting a newly welded rail or to repair a defect as part of a maintenance
schedule. Phased Array technology produces certain beam characteristics by time shifting the pulsing and receiving of
each array element [6]. These characteristics include beam focusing and skewing, which could be useful in testing of
rails.
Keywords: Phased Array, Sectorial Scan, Half-Moon Crack, Thermite Weld, Bolt-Hole Cracks

INTRODUCTION Defects in rail [7] could be of the following types

The Indian Railways is the fourth largest railway network
having 114,500 km of total track over a route of 65000km.It
carries over 30 million passengers and 2.8million tons of
freight daily. High speed trains and heavy load traffic are
becoming common in the recent days. Majority of the failed
in-service rails are attributed primarily to the internal defects
in the web and head region that propagates easily.The annual
damage to life and property due to rail accidents is enormous.
The development and implementation of improved rail
metallurgies and maintenance programs are expected to
decrease rail flaws. Through increased reliability of flaw
detection technologies, a decrease in rail failures and accidents
are expected [1].
Main causes of the defects [7] in rail are
1. Manufacturing defects in material such as non-metallic
inclusions, hydrogen flakes which could be present in
material even after a set of non-destructive testing
conducted during quality assurance.
2. Residual stresses induced during manufacturing.
1. Horizontal cracks in head: cracks that run parallel to rail
depth at a depth of 10-20mm, which could finally lead
to crushing of rail head in some cases.
2. Horizontal cracks in the head-web junction: It could lead
to rail head separation.
3. Horizontal crack at web-foot junction: These cracks could
develop either towards head or foot.
4. Vertical longitudinal splitting of web: due to heavy
accumulation of non-metallic inclusions.
5. Bolt-hole cracks account for about the 50% of the rail
defects in joined tracks. Fretting fatigue of the bolt shank
against the hole surface is believed to be the principal
cause of this typology of crack. These cracks are usually
formed due to fatigue produced as a result of cyclic
stresses combined with stress concentrations in the bolt
holes [3].
6. Transverse cracks in rail foot: These cracks which develop
in the rail foot grow as half-moon cracks.

3. Defects associated with welding. 7. Weld cracks and other defects like porosity, slag
inclusion, lack of fusion which may be introduced due
4. Thermal stresses due to large variations in rail to improper welding.
temperature.
Alumino-thermic welding process provides us with flexibility
5. Dynamic load acting on rails while in-service. and low capital cost, but it shows variable quality in finished
246 Girish.N.Namboodiri et.al : Proceedings of the National Seminar & Exhibition on Non-Destructive Evaluation
welds, due to process limitations and operator dependency.
The flash butt welds usually exhibit high tensile residual
stresses at the level of the rail web [10], which are detrimental
for fatigue service conditions. As a result, it is common to
find failures starting at butt-welded joints.
An attempt has been made to detect these defects using
ultrasonic phased array. The advantage of taking a sectorial
scan, where a steering through a sequence of angles is possible
was utilized for the inspection. The capability of these probes
to detect cracks effectively and its flexibility could be
profitably used in inspection of defects in rail.
THEORY
Phased array probes consist of a set of piezoelectric elements
arranged in an array. When excited, the elements produces
ultrasonic waves, which interacts with each other
constructively or destructively leading to an increase or
decrease in the resultant wave energy respectively. By varying
the time at which these elements are excited, it is possible to
use these effects to both steer and focus the resulting combined
wavefront. This is the basic principle behind Phased array
testing. Software called Focal Law Calculator is used to
establish suitable specific delay times for firing each group of
elements, so that the required beam shape could be generated
through wave interactions. It also takes into account the probe
and wedge characteristics as well as geometry and acoustical
properties of the material while establishing the focal laws
[6].
Features that are possible using the above principle are
electronic linear scan and sectorial scan. In electronic linear
scan, the same focal law and delay are multiplexed across a
group of active elements and the entire elements would be
involved in the scanning, with only a set of elements activated
at an instant. Scanning will be done at a constant angle and
along the total aperture length. In sectorial scan, the beam
will be moved through a sweep range for a particular focal
depth. The beam steering taking place during S scan maps the
components at appropriate angles, optimizes the probability
of detection of defects [6]. Electronic focusing optimizes the
beam shape and size at expected defect location and also can
improve the Signal to Noise ratio significantly.
EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
Equipment Used was Omniscan MX, which is portable, light-
weight, rugged, battery operated. It has fully featured A scan,
B scan and C scan displays which helps in better visualisation
of the defects. It has advanced real-time data processing
capability also. Filters are available which could be used to
enhance the A scans and also to improve the image quality[6].
Rail height = 172mm, Material velocity
= 5890 m/s (longitudinal).
Probe and Wedge selection were done and their specifications
are shown in Table 1. Number of elements activated was 16,
as in sectorial scan only fixed number of elements could be
activated at a time. Focal depth was fixed at 20mm. A range
of 180mm was selected.
Fig. 1 : Probe position
Table 1 : Probe Specifications
Probe Wedge Frequency Number of Pitch Element
No. (MHz) Elements (mm) Size(mm)
5L64A2 SA2N60L 5 16 0.6 0.6
Probe was placed on the flat area on the running surface
(Figure.1), where proper contact was possible. A sectorial
scanning was performed with angle ranging from 300_600 in
steps of one. A few linear scans at 00 were also performed to
have a better understanding of the defects. An optimum pulse
repetition frequency was selected. Couplant used during tests
is water.
Data acquisition was done at each instant and analysed with
tomoview software and defects were located. True depth, angle
and sound path of the signal received from defect was noted
down, which helped to locate the position of defect.
Inspections were also focussed on Alumino-thermic and flash-
butt welds that were present in the sample.
RESULTS
In Figure 2a shown below, a bolt-hole crack is there which
starts from near the bolthole surface and propagating at an
angle of near 450 from the vertical till the web-railhead
junction. When a linear scan at 00 was conducted, a very nice
indication of the crack was seen, which gave a good idea about
how the crack had propagated. The indications in linear scan
(Figure 2c) were from depths 77.55mm, 74mm and 70mm
respectively. In sectorial scan (Figure 2b), indication other than
that from bolt hole came at depth 75mm, which shows clearly
that it is from the bolt-hole crack.
Cracks can also be formed in the weld. They are thermite-
joint horizontal cracks (Figure 3a). Here in the sample rail, a
crack is seen in the alumino-thermic weld which is shown
below. The indication is from a depth of 110mm, which clearly
gives an idea that the echo is from the crack in the weld
(Figure 3b).
Internal Cracks can develop in the head region (Figure 4a).
These horizontal cracks could be easily detected by sectorial
 NDE 2011, December 8-10, 2011 247

Fig. 2 : a) Crack region between bolt holes b) PA sectorial image picking up the crack along with indication from bolt hole
c) PA linear scan at 0o

Fig. 3 : a) Crack in the thermic weld b) PA image showing the defect

Fig. 4 : a) Head of rail b) Crack indication in sectorial scan c) Crack indication in linear scan
248 Girish.N.Namboodiri et.al : Proceedings of the National Seminar & Exhibition on Non-Destructive Evaluation
Fig. 5 : a) Alumino-thermic weld with half-moon crack region b) Sectorial image of crack
scan of the head region. Indications shown in Figure 4b were
from a depth of 30mm and 36mm. In linear scan at 00, a clear
indication of the crack was seen (Figure.4c), with each strong
signal picked up by different elements giving different depths
of 24mm, 26.5mm and 28mm respectively.
Half-moon crack is a defect which usually occurs at the bottom
of alumino-thermic weld (Figure 5a). The image shown in
Figure 5b is indicating that the signal is coming from a depth
of 167mm, which means that the crack is of 5mm depth from
the bottom. The indication clearly tells us that it is an echo
from the Half-moon crack.
CONCLUSION
The results show that this method of inspection was capable
of detecting all defects irrespective of orientation and nature.
It can detect defects that lie in head, web and foot of the rail.
When compared to conventional ultrasonic testing, the results
were much better. Apart from detecting the defect, its severity
could also be checked. The scanning speed is the only
limitation as of now. Therefore it could well be used for
detection of defects in the welds used in rails. Further research
work will be focussed on alumino-thermic welds and flash-
butt welds.
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