DESIGN OF RAIL TRACK FLAW DETECTION

SYSTEM USING MATLAB

Presented by

ESHU SHARMA
M.Tech(MEC)

14SCME202001

Under the Supervision of

SWET CHANDAN
Assistant Professor
School of Mechanical Engineering

CONTENT
Introduction
Accident summary
Literature Review
Methods used in past
Proposed work
Objectives
Vision inspection system
Work done so far

Data

collection
Method selection
Histogram equalization
Result

Further Work
References

INTRODUCTION

Rail track inspection is a necessary task in railway

maintenance and is required to periodically inspect the
rail track by trained human operator, who is walking along
the track & searching for defects .
The detection of cracks in rails is a challenging problem,
and much research effort has been spent in the
development of reliable, repeatable crack detection
methods for use on in service rails.
Rail inspection methods include destructive techniques
and non-destructive techniques, such as hammer
sounding. But these methods just cover limited space and
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have limited effectiveness in identifying the faults.Contd.

Non-destructive evaluation techniques for rail track

inspection had developed. These technologies include
ultrasonic
and eddy current methods,neither
technique is particularly effective for the detection of
cracks in the rail foot. The results of these studies
confirm the ability of the proposed method to locate
and quantify surface-connected notches and cracks
Visual inspection has been developed in recent years
with the great progress of computer vision
techniques. In a visual inspection system (VIS), a
high speed digital camera, which is installed under a
test train, is used to capture images of a rail track as
the train moves over the track, and then, the
obtained images are analyzed automatically using a
customized image processing software.

ACCIDENT SUMMARY
In indian railway 80% accidents were caused by
human failure.
Here we have the summary of rail accidents due to
derailment causes from year 2009 to 2014.
YEAR
ACCIDENTS
2009-10
80
2010-11
78
2011-12
55
2012-13
48
2013-14
52

Contd.

LITERATURE SURVEY
NAME

PROPOSED WORK

JOURNAL

1-Esther resendiz and

In it the detection,
segmentation and defect
assessment
is
considered . An algorithm
is developed to inspect
the acquired images

Automated visual
inspection of rail road
tracks, IEEE
Transactions on
intelligent transportation
systems, vol. 14, no.
2,june 2013.

2-Gimy joy and Jyothi

This paper presents arealtime VIS for discrete

surface defects of
rail
heads.This paper propose
the
Local
Normalization(LN)
method to enhance the
distinction
between
defects and background

A Real Time VIS for

Rail Flaw Detection ,
International Journal of
Scientific and Research
Publications, Volume 4,
Issue 8, August 2014

narendra ahuja

RL

3-Ashwini belkhade and This paper proposes a

Snehal kathale

Automatic vision

system to inspect the

based inspection of

rail track component

railway track-a review

tie plates, anchors etc

research in engineering

such as missing bolts,

by using vision based
method. This system
provides real-time

in Indian journal of

and technology,Volume:
03 Issue: 02 ,Feb-2014.

monitoring and
4-Mohd. Karukh

Hashmi and Avinash G

Keskar

structural condition for

This paper proposes a rail
railway track using
surface defects inspection
vision based method
method based on
computer vision system.
Various algorithm related
denoising, filtering,
thresholding;
segmentation and feature
extraction are applied for

Computer-Vision Based
Visual Inspection And
Crack Detection Of Rail
Road Tracks in Recent
Advances in Electrical and
Computer Engineering,
jan-2012

METHODS USED IN PAST

EDDY

CURRENT CRACK DETECTION METHOD:

It is used to detect discontinuities and defects in conductive materials.

Eddy current inspection system of rail flaws used in this study included a
detection coil and an excitation coil, which formed an eddy current sensor
probe. Two eddy current sensor probes were used. One was for detecting
the signal from a rail. It was positioned on a tested sample and scanned
along the rail length. Another was for reference. It was positioned in air
far from a sample. The controller supplied an excitation current to a
series connection of two excitation coils and amplified a signal from the
detection coils. The width of the railhead was 65 mm; thus, the detection
coil in the sensor probe could not effectively evaluate the entire plane of
the rail top. Therefore, the position of the sensor probe was varied in five
different positions along the width. The scan speed of the sensor probe
was 2.5 mm/s and the data acquisition rate was 8 point/s (3.2 point/mm).
The frequency ofthe exciting magnetic field was 5 kHz.

 ULTRASONIC

CRACK DETECTION METHOD:

Rails are systematically inspected for internal and surface defects

using various Non-Destructive Evaluation (NDE) techniques.
During the manufacturing process rails are examined visually for
any surface damage, while the presence of any internaldefects is
assessed mainly through ultrasonic inspection.Ultrasonic testing
(UT) is a non-destructive inspection method that uses high
frequency sound waves (ultrasound) that are above the range of
human hearing, to measure geometric and physical properties in
materials. To perform UT, electrical energy is converted to
mechanical energy, in the form of sound waves, by a transducer. The
transducer accomplishes this energy conversion due to a
phenomenon referred to as the piezoelectric effect. This occurs in
several materials, both naturally-occurring and manmade. Quartz is
a naturally occurring piezoelectric material. A piezoelectric material
will produce a mechanical change in dimension when excited with
an electronic pulse. Similarly, this same material will also produce
an electric pulse when acted upon mechanically.

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PROPOSED WORK
The goal of this project is to design a rail track
flaw detection system using MATLAB.
Here we use MATLAB software,Image processing
tool to get our goal.
Here we use histogram equalization method to
achieve our aim.

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OBJECTIVE:

Reduce rail accidents caused by surface cracks.

1)Proper maintenance of rail tracks.
2)Identify the crack geometry.
o

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VISION INSPECTION SYSTEM

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VISION INSPECTION SYSTEM

In vision based method our device will capture videos of

railway track component using vehicle-mounted Camera,
image enhancement using image processing and assisted
automation using a real time tracking algorithms.
In a visual inspection system (VIS), a high speed digital
camera, which is installed under a test train, is used to
capture images of a rail track as the train moves over the
track, and then, the obtained images are analyzed
automatically using a customized image processing programe.
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Contd.

UISITION

Digital cameras are used to capture the images or

videos of rail track
Surf View comes with on board computer, data
acquisition and software along with six cameras
scanners and cables .A calibrated CCTV camera is
used to capture the image frame at resolution 640x480
at 30 frames per second which was mounted on the rail
track
Different types of cameras are used for data
acquisition purpose in different vision based system.

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Contd.

IMAGE ACQUISITION SYSTEM

fig.1-Image acquisition system

Reference- beena vision system[7]

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IMAGE ANALYSIS
The frames of image are proceeds by using algorithm
to identify the defected component and assess the
stipulation of railway tracks.
In vision based system image processing is used to
recognize of clips, smoothing and edge detection.
The captured data send to PC .
Matlab coding program is used for defect analysis and
it provide a comprehensive result evaluation

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WORK DONE SO FAR

Data collection

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Reference-www.ndt.net,www.iorw.org

METHOD SELECTION
Here we have so many methods for rail track
fault detection , like music algorithm, neural
networks , pixilation and wavelets etc.
We use MATLAB coding method using histogram
due to certain causes like easy to
understand,fault detection is easy,coding is easy.

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HISTOGRAM EQUALIZATION

Histogram equalization is a simple and effective image

enhancing technique.
Histogram equalizationis a technique for adjusting image
intensities to enhance contrast.
It is a challenge to inspect rail track defects in a vision
system because of illumination inequality and the variation
of reflection property of rail surfaces.
Histogram equalization is widely used for contrast
enhancement in a variety of applications due to its simple
function and effectiveness.

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RESULT

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FURTHER WORK

Real time implementation is under process.

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REFERENCES
1-Esther

Resendiz,Member, IEEE, John M. Hart, and Narendra

Ahuja, Felllow IEEEAutomated Visual Inspection of Railroad
Tracks IEEE transaction on intelligent transportation systems,
vol.14, no.2, June 2013
2-Jyothi R L ,Gimy joy A Real Time VIS For Rail Track Flaw
Detection
International Journal of Scientific and
Research Publications, August 8,2014
3-Ashwini Belkhade and Snehal Kathale, Automatic Vision Based
Inspection Of Railway Track A Review International Journal Of
Research In Engineering and Technology .
4-Luis Fernando, Condition Monitoring Of Railway Turnouts And
Other Track Components Using Machine Vision November 2010
5-Mohd. Karukh Hashmi and Avinash G. Keskar, Computer Vision
Based Visual Inspection And Crack Detection Of Rail Road Tracks
Recent Advances in Electrical and Computer Engineering .
6-www.iorw.org,(institute of rail welding).
7-www.ndt.net

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REFERENCES
8-Abhisekh Jain, Arvind, Balaji, Ram Viyas N.P. Onboard dynamic
rail track safety monitoring system International conference on
advanced communication systems, January 10 - 12, 2007
9-. Beena vision Automated Rail Surface and Track Inspection.
10-Isabelle Tang and Toby P. Breckon, Automatic road environment
classification IEEE transaction on intelligent transportation systems,
vol.12, no.2, June 2011.
11-Hoang Trinh Norman Haas Ying Li Charles Otto Sharath Pankanti
Enhanced rail component detection and consolidation for rail track
inspection Ibm T. J. watson research center 19 skylikne dr,
hawthorne, ny 10532.
12-Maneesha Singh, Sameer Singh, Autonomous rail track inspection
using vision based system IEEE international conference on
computational intelligence for homeland security and personal safety
alexandria, va, usa 16-17 october 2006.

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THANK YOU

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