The project deployed an equipment and software for ultrasound rail testing car for the Polish Railway company PKP PLK S.A. The car has been equipped with 18-channel flaw detector, testing each track rail with 8+1 ultrasound probes, with the Client’s provided scheme. The measurements are performed with working speed up to 60 km/h, thus each measurement channel is triggered in parallel with a repetition frequency of ca 5kHz.
The measurement step equals 3.5mm (along the rail). The software aids detailed tuning of equipment settings as a measurement preparation, monitoring of the measurement progress with rich visualisation means, performs data acquisition, preprocessing and storage. Separate software package allows for off-line analysis of measurement results and features an initial automatic analysis, reducing the measurement noise and false positives. It offers as well multi-contextual tools for data inspection and analysis for the human operator. The analysis can be performed simultaneously on many workstations.
Another part of the system is a visual inspection module, featuring four high-res IP cameras with special Xenon-lamp illumination, recording images of the side and top surface of both rails. Two Linux-based servers gather, compress and store the video stream. Full, distance-based synchronisation with the ultrasound flaw detector subsystem, allows for accurate rail image presentation ion the analysis phase.
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See also: A video subsystem success story published on the web page of cameras manufacturer