• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.845-849
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• 2024

Currently, rail surface defects are increasing due to the aging of urban railway rails, but in the detailed guidelines for track performance evaluation established by the country, rail surface damage is inspected with the naked eye of an engineer and with simple measuring tools. It is very important to discover defects in the rail surface through periodic track tours and visual inspection. However, evaluating the severity of defects on the rail surface based on the subjective judgment of the inspector has significant limitations in predicting damage inside the rail. In this study, the characteristics of cracks inside the rail due to rail surface damage were studied. In field measurements, rail surface damage was selected, old rail samples were collected in the acceleration and braking sections, and a scanning electron microscope (SEM) was used to evaluate the rail surface damage was used to analyze the crack characteristics. As a result of the analysis, the crack mechanism caused by the running train and the crack characteristics of the acceleration section where cracks occur at an angle rising toward the rail surface were experimentally proven.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.585-590
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• 2024

In this study, rail surface defects are increasing due to the aging of urban railway rails, but in the detailed guidelines for track performance evaluation established by the country, rail surface damage is inspected with the naked eye of engineers and simple measuring tools. With the recent enactment of the Track Diagnosis Act, a large budget has been invested and the volume of rail diagnosis is rapidly increasing, but it is difficult to secure the reliability of diagnosis results using labor-intensive visual inspection techniques. It is very important to discover defects in the rail surface through periodic track tours and visual inspection. However, evaluating the severity of defects on the rail surface based on the subjective judgment of the inspector has significant limitations in predicting damage inside the rail. In this study, the rail internal crack characteristics due to rail surface damage were studied. In field measurements, rail surface damage locations were selected, samples of various damage types were collected, and the rail surface damage status was evaluated. In indoor testing, we intend to analyze the correlation between rail surface defects and internal defects using a electron scanning microscope (SEM). To determine the crack growth rate of urban railway rails currently in use, the Gaussian probability density function was applied and analyzed.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.272-279
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• 2008

The importance of maintenance of rail surface defects is increasing more according to the KTX operation. That is because during high speed operation of rolling stock, rail surface defects may cause shortened fatigue life of rail, acceleration of track degradation and reduced ride comfort. The paper was intended to study the establishment of rail grinding criteria of high-speed railway lines considering the KTX operation circumstances. For this, the specimens of UIC 60 rail on Kyeong-Bu high-speed operation lines were collected and they were tested for metallographic structure and measured for the hardness. As the factors affecting RCF causing the defects of rail surface, passing tonnage, running speed and track condition are considered.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.14 no.6
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• pp.535-544
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• 2011

The rail surface defects can cause the high impact load on the track and lead to the progress of the rail fatigue damage and the rail break. In case of the rail break, there is a great deal of risk for derailment, and thus the maintenance criteria for the rail surface defects are of great importance. In this study, using the dynamic train-track interaction analysis program, the impact wheel loads and rail bending stresses according to the depths of the surface defects have been calculated with the input data of the rail surface irregularities measured at 43 spots with surface defects in the ballasted track of high-speed railway. Considering the irregularity of track geometry, the allowable limits of wheel load and rail bending stress have been set, and the maintenance criteria for the rail surface defects was suggested by analyzing the relationship of the maximum values of wheel load and rail bending stress versus depth and width of rail surface defect. The analysis results suggest that the allowable depth of the surface defect is determined approximately 0.2mm from the limit of the impact wheel load.

• The Journal of the Convergence on Culture Technology
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.505-510
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• 2024

Since rolling contact fatigue cracks can always occur on the rail surface, which is the contact surface between wheels and rails, railway rails require thorough inspection and diagnosis to thoroughly inspect the condition of the cracks and prevent breakage. Recent detailed guidelines on the performance evaluation of track facilities present the requirements for methods and procedures for track performance evaluation. However, diagnosing and grading rail surface damage mainly relies on external inspection (visual inspection), which inevitably relies on qualitative evaluation based on the subjective judgment of the inspector. Therefore, in this study, we conducted a deep learning model study for rail surface defect detection using Fast R-CNN. After building a dataset of rail surface defect images, the model was tested. The performance evaluation results of the deep learning model showed that mAP was 94.9%. Because Fast R-CNN has a high crack detection effect, it is believed that using this model can efficiently identify rail surface defects.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.141-146
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• 2012

The rail surface defects which are generated on repeated rolling contact fatigue are getting increased according to high speed, high density, and minimum weight. In addition, Increasing noise and vibration are affected by these also impact load generated as well. Because of this phenomenon, more serious and critical damages were occurred. In fact, in order to control them, the rail grinding amount in Korea. This study evaluated how depth of hardening on rail surface is formed and suggested optimal rail grinding amount by RCF(rolling contact fatigue) test with generated contact pressure between KTX wheel and UIC60 rail by applying FEM analysis. Therefore, the amount was generated approximately 0.2mm/20MGT to maintain integrity of rail surface by getting rid of depth of hardening on rail according to rail accumulated passing tonnage.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.234-240
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• 2017

In this study, the influences of rail surface roughness on dynamic wheel-rail forces currently employed in conventional lines were assessed by performing field measurements according to grinding of rail surface roughness. The influence of the grinding effect was evaluated using a previous empirical prediction model for dynamic wheel-rail forces; model includes first-order derivatives of QI (Quality Index) and vehicle velocity. The theoretical dynamic wheel-rail force determined using the previous prediction equation was analyzed using the QI, which decreased due to rail grinding as determined through field measurements. At a constant track support stiffness, an increase in the QI caused an increase in dynamic wheel-rail forces. Further, it can be inferred that the results of dynamic wheel-rail analysis obtained using the measured data, such as the variation of QI due to rail grinding, can be used to predict the peak dynamic forces. Therefore, it is obvious that the optimum amount of rail grinding can be determined by considering the QI, that was regarding an operation characteristics of the target track (vehicle velocity and wheel load).

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.13 no.6
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• pp.577-582
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• 2010

The importance of maintenance of rail surface defects is increasing according to the KTX operation. That is because during high speed operation of rolling stocks, rail surface defects shorten fatigue life of rail, accelerate track degradation and deteriorate ride comfort. Rail grinding has been applied for effective rail maintenance in Kyeong-Bu HS line. This paper evaluates the effectiveness of rail grinding in term of rail fatigue life. To this end, the stresses of the rail are measured under KTX running and the equivalent stress range is calculated by RMC after the frequency analysis done with rainflow counting method. Also, The Modified Miner's rule is applied to predict the fatigue life of ground rail. The result of the analysis shows that the fatigue life of ground rail is increased by 15%.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.447-454
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• 2010

The defects of rail head induced by fatigue and deterioration are mainly classified by two types ; one occurred on the surface of rail head the another occurred on the inner rail head. This study performed the surface irregularity measurement of rail head according to the passing tonnage in the urban railway. Also, we carried out microscopic structure test, chemical component test and micro-hardness test for the specimen which is the used rail on metro line by accumulated passing tonnage. As a result of this study, for new rail, it should be performed initial grinding in order to remove 0.3mm of de-carbonized layer. The preventive-cyclic grinding for preventing RCF defects is proposed two options : grinding by the whole line and grinding by specified sections.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Nondestructive Testing
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• v.31 no.4
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• pp.398-413
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• 2011

For railway safety, it is very important to detect damages of rails at their early stage because any undetected damage in a rail can break the rail and cause a serious railway accident. In this paper, several NDT applicable to rail inspections are described. Major damage types in rails are discussed first and the rail inspection technology using conventional piezoelectric ultrasonic transducers, which is widely adopted for damage detection of rails, is explained. Other NDT being researched or tested for rail inspection are also discussed as complementary technologies to the concurrent contact type ultrasonic inspection. Characteristics of each rail inspection technologies are evaluated in order to provide requirements for future development of a new rail inspection method.