Technical Objectives

1. To develop a condition monitoring technique for rail application
2. To apply new types of permanently mounted transducer on the rail
• AE and LRU capabilities that will be able to detect and locate flaws in the rail.
3. To develop ultrasound focusing techniques. The system will make use of two novel focusing techniques:
• Time reversal focusing (TRF)
• Time delay Focusing (TDF)
4. To overcome problems of ultrasound dispersion and increase the inspection range.
5. To develop new hardware.
• Several energy sourcing techniques will be considered for the MonitoRail system such as energy harvesting and customised batteries.
6. To develop a central software program with high-level functions
• Data collection, signal processing, data analysis and representation, information storage and user interface.
7. To develop wireless methods of transmitting the data from the sensors on the rail to a central base station.
8. To demonstrate the integrated system on actual operating rail.