In situ testing of rail damages in accordance with Industry 4.0

Abstract

The railway is a very important segment of the public transport and therefore its part of the critical infrastructure system. The speed of the trains depends on the rail conditions. The state of the rails needs continuous control to determine the train speed and continuous traffic and transport. The goal of the Industry 4.0 is to build a smart industry and industrial environment [1]. Part of this smart system is the traffic and the transportation on road and railway too. The continuous railway transportation needs quality railroads and trains. The rails have complex load during their lifetime. In this research, we wanted to find a test method and innovate an experimental setup for the continuous state control of rails. In our work, we wanted to find a relationship between propagations of the rail surface damage and the loads. Also based on failure propagation rules we wanted innovate a special installation for in situ monitoring the process of the rail surface damage, predict the defects and crack propagations. This work is in accordance with the aim of the Industry 4.0.