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LATEST NEWS: The MonitoRail Project consortium will be attending the Infrarail 2012, 1-3 May 2012 (Birmingham, UK)
Infrarail 2012 is the definitive rail infrastructure event. With over 200 exhibitors showcasing thousands of products, it is the must visit industry event of the year. Make sure the dates are in your diary: 1-3 May 2012 at Hall 3, NEC, Birmingham. Take a look at the organisations and products that will be on display at Infrarail 2012 and start to plan your visit.This project will develop a guided wave LRUT system not only for rail inspection but also for real time monitoring of the rail and to create an intelligent railway infrastructure. Flexible sensors will be embedded in the railways and a collection data system will be developed and integrated on the existent systems. This will also extend the life of the materials through early repair of rail tracks.
The rail track is a natural wave guide where waves could easily propagate for long distance and detect defects in different area such as the web the head and the foot. Moreover long lengths of rail track could be detected at once making this a cost efficient technique for continuous monitoring. The system will offers 100% coverage up to 50m from one single location. Multiple sensors will be used to cover long distance inspection.
Significant technical issues need to be addressed and solved before this technology can be considered a viable and industrial solution. The prototype demonstrations to date have shown promising results but have been limited to static testing. Any loss of signal or momentary surface interference results in a signal that is similar to that of a defect, thus the potential of false positive indications is high, which could severely impact the efficiency of overall inspection.
Furthermore the potential of permanently mounted sensors will be investigated for critical areas of the rail network.
