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Visualization of the Rolling Contact Fatigue Cracks in Rail Tracks with a Magnetooptical Sensor

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Abstract

The rolling contact fatigue cracks (RCF), produced at the surface of the rail tracks, can be detected using a magnetooptical (MO) sensor. Rail tracks are carbon steels with pearlite microstructure. This microstructure has a lamellar texture composed of alternating layers of ferrite and cementite. Both phases are soft ferromagnetic materials at room temperature. If an external magnetic field is applied on the surface of a rail track, the reduced magnetic permeability causes a magnetic leakage field above the cracks. When the external magnetic field is removed, in most cases, a residual stray magnetic field remains above the cracks. When a MO sensor is placed on the surface of the rail track, the sudden change of the stray remanent magnetic field near a crack, yields a significant rotation of the polarization plane of the reflected light, resulting in high MO contrast, exactly above the cracks. Using a polished surface and a cross-section from the head of the rail track, we succeeded in visualizing the RCF cracks in the laboratory. The RCF cracks can also be detected on the surface of the rail track, in field measurements, using a portable commercial polarized light microscope equipped with a MO sensor. Finally, we use computer vision methods, to automatically detect the RCF cracks, using video recorded by displacing the portable microscopy with the MO sensor, on the surface of the rail tracks. We tested an unsupervised automatic crack detection algorithm, which exploits the tubular contrast of the RCF cracks to pinpoint the pixels that correspond to them.

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Acknowledgements

The present work has been partially supported by: (a) the project MIS 5002567, implemented under the “Action for the Strategic Development on the Research and Technological Sector”, and (b) the project MIS 5002772, “National Infrastructure in Nanotechnology, Advanced Materials and Micro-/ Nanoelectronics” which is implemented under the Action “Reinforcement of the Research and Innovation Infrastructure”. Both projects are funded by the Operational Programme “Competitiveness, Entrepreneurship and Innovation” (NSRF 2014-2020) and co-financed by Greece and the European Union (European Regional Development Fund).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology (INN), NCSR Demokritos 15310 Aghia Paraskevi, Athens, Greece

    A. Chotzoglou & M. Pissas

  2. School of Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Thessaly, 38334, Volos, Greece

    A. D. Zervaki & G. N. Haidemenopoulos

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Khalifa University of Science and Technology, Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates

    G. N. Haidemenopoulos

  4. Wellcome/EPSRC Center for Interventional and Surgical Sciences, University College London, Greater London, UK

    T. Pissas

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  1. A. Chotzoglou
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  4. G. N. Haidemenopoulos
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  5. T. Pissas
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Correspondence to M. Pissas.

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Chotzoglou, A., Pissas, M., Zervaki, A.D. et al. Visualization of the Rolling Contact Fatigue Cracks in Rail Tracks with a Magnetooptical Sensor. J Nondestruct Eval 38, 68 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10921-019-0606-5

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