Testing of the middle zone of the rail weld

Abstract

There are several millions aluminothermic welds on the European rail network. The welds are a critical safety component of the rail infrastructure. The consequences of a single failure could result in the derailment.
The objective of this investigation was to test using CIVA software the proposed configuration of the ultrasonic phased array for testing of the middle zone of the weld, where shrinkage of the body is usually present. The propagation of the ultrasonic wave in the rail with shrinkage type defects has been modelled using CIVA software.
The presented results demonstrate that it should be possible to locate shrinkage type defects in the rail weld using 2MHz ultrasonic phased array.