JPH0720064A - Frail damage evaluation method for laid rail by reflection infrared method. Its equipment. - Google Patents

Abstract

PURPOSE:To evaluate the kind and development of a fatigue damage on the head surface of a laid rail by making infrared rays incident to the head surface by turning on an infrared heater and taking the picture of the head surface, and then, detecting less-blurring reflected infrared rays. CONSTITUTION:A measuring section composed of an infrared camera 8 and curved infrared heater 2 is fixed immediately below a vehicle 1. A controller 14, display device 15, and arithmetic device 16 are mounted on the vehicle 1. By using such a constitution, infrared rays 5 are made incident to the head surface 4 of a rail 3 from the heater 2. The picture of reflected infrared rays 6 from the head surface 4 is taken with a camera 8 through an opening 7 provided in the heater 2. An analyzing device 9 quantitatively analyzes a fatigue damage from a picture transferred from the controller 14 by analyzing the distribution of the infrared rays 6 photographed by means of the camera 8 and displays analyzed results on the display device 15.

Description

Detailed Description of the Invention

[0001]

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 1. Field of the Invention The present invention relates to a rail rail fatigue damage evaluation apparatus and method for evaluating fatigue damage on a rail rail head surface in contact with a wheel.

[0002]

2. Description of the Related Art Fatigue on a rail head surface progresses as a vehicle passes by. For example, fatigue damage occurs on an ultra high-speed railway with cumulative tonnage of about 100 million tons or more. Fatigue damage refers to cracks on the rail head surface, dark spots on the rail, and shell-like peeling surfaces, which can be roughly divided into head surface center shelling, gauge corner shelling or creaking cracks on the wheel flange and contact area. Naturally, they progress with fatigue progression. This is published by Railway Technical Research Institute: RRR (1987)
28 page.

Since such fatigue damage may lead to a serious accident, maintenance and repair of railway rails have been conventionally performed. As described in page 36 of the above-mentioned Railway Technical Research Institute published by RRR (1986), the conventional methods of maintenance and repair of railway rails are as follows.
First, an ultrasonic flaw detection vehicle is run to detect the presence or absence of a flaw on the vehicle. Then, when fatigue damage is detected, a staff member goes to the site and inspects the existence, type and progress of the damage in detail with an ultrasonic flaw detector thickness gauge.

[0004]

In the ultrasonic method, an ultrasonic wave is incident on a rail with a medium (for example, water) placed between a transmitter / receiver and a test piece, and echoes other than the head surface and the back surface of the rail. It is to confirm that there is a defect or scratch inside by receiving. That is, the conventional ultrasonic flaw detection was originally to evaluate the existence of internal defects. Therefore, the conventional ultrasonic flaw detection vehicle has the following problems. That is, 1) Since echoes from the rail surface are diffusely reflected, it is difficult to detect fatigue damage on the rail head surface. 2) Since the measurement requires a long time, it was impossible to quickly evaluate the fatigue damage on the head surface of the rail laid over a long distance. 3) Due to the overcrowded schedule, the inspection time was often limited, and it was difficult to drive the ultrasonic flaw detection vehicle frequently.

An object of the present invention is to solve the above problems of the conventional method and to provide an apparatus capable of accurately evaluating the type and progress of fatigue damage on the surface of a laying rail head, and an evaluation method therefor. Is.

[0006]

According to the present invention, in order to achieve the above object, a fatigue evaluation device for a laying rail comprises an infrared heater, an infrared camera, a stabilizer, an analyzing device, a display device, and a computing device. A measuring unit consisting of an infrared heater and an infrared camera is fixed to the vehicle via a stabilizer, and the infrared heater is turned on to make infrared rays incident on the rail head surface, and the rail head surface is photographed to detect reflected infrared rays with less blurring. And means for analyzing the "kind" and "progress" of fatigue damage on the rail head surface based on the image pickup signal given from the infrared camera, and storing and displaying the information.

[0007]

According to the present invention configured as described above, the infrared rays from the infrared heater are incident on the rail head surface when the vehicle is traveling, and the infrared rays reflected from the rail head surface are photographed by the infrared camera. By analyzing the state of distribution with an analyzer, it is possible to evaluate the "type" and "progress" of fatigue damage.

The present invention will be described in detail below with reference to the accompanying drawings. The present invention is based on a feature of an infrared camera, that is, a two-dimensional imaging of infrared rays reflected from an object and a basic investigation utilizing the fact that the infrared rays can be detected in real time and continuously with high sensitivity. It was completed by discovering that the distribution of infrared rays reflected from the rail head surface has a unique correspondence with the fatigue damage distribution upon incidence of infrared rays.

That is, as shown in the characteristic diagram of the distribution of reflected infrared rays and fatigue damage in FIG. 1, the distribution of reflected infrared rays and the "type" and "progression degree" of fatigue damage have a close relationship. Then, the infrared camera can detect reflected infrared energy from the rail head surface and easily make a two-dimensional image of the distribution thereof, and the image has a one-to-one correspondence with that of an ordinary optical photograph. That is, the reflectance of the infrared camera image is low in the fatigue damaged portion, and this degree becomes more remarkable as the damage increases. The reason for this is that cracks, dents, peeling surfaces, and the like occur in the fatigue-damaged portion, but such portions have high absorption and irregular reflectance of infrared rays from the infrared heater.

FIG. 2 shows fatigue damage due to dents, and FIG. 3 shows fatigue damage due to cracks. In addition, these FIG.
3A and 3B, (a) shows a cross section, (b) shows a plane, and (c) shows a two-dimensional reflection infrared image. As is clear from these figures, the amount of reflected infrared light reaching the infrared camera is smaller than that of the surrounding areas due to absorption and diffuse reflection of incident infrared light in the depressions and cracks. Therefore, when infrared rays are made to enter the rail head surface at an equal distance by the infrared heater and the infrared rays reflected from the rail head surface are photographed by the infrared camera, there is a one-to-one correspondence with the fatigue damage part in the image. A clear two-dimensional image can be obtained. Therefore, in the present invention, the “type” and “progression degree” of fatigue damage can be quantitatively obtained from the image shape and the intensity of infrared rays by performing image processing on the two-dimensional image of the infrared camera.

[0011]

[Embodiment] As described above, in the present invention, the "type" and "progression degree" of fatigue damage on the surface of the laid rail head are evaluated by the reflection infrared camera image taken when the vehicle is stopped or the vehicle is running.

A specific embodiment of the present invention will be described below with reference to the drawings. In the device of the present invention, as shown in FIG. 4, a measurement unit, that is, an infrared camera 8 and an infrared heater 2 are fixed directly below a vehicle 1 via a stabilizer 12,
A control device 14, a display device 15, a calculation device 16 and the like are installed in the vehicle 1.

The procedure of the evaluation is as follows. First, an infrared ray 5 is made incident on the head surface 4 of the rail 3 by the curved infrared heater 2, and infrared rays 6 reflected from the rail head surface 4 pass through an opening 7 provided in the infrared heater 2. Take an image with the infrared camera 8. In addition,
FIG. 5 is a cross-sectional view of the measurement unit, in which the infrared heater 2 is arranged parallel to the rail 3. Then, the analysis device 9 analyzes the “distribution of the reflected infrared rays 6” captured by the infrared camera 8. FIG. 6 shows an example of the display result, which is created as follows.

That is, as shown in FIG. 4, when the wheel 10 of the vehicle 1 rotates in the direction of rotation indicated by the arrow 11, infrared rays 5 are continuously incident on the rail head surface 4 from the curved infrared heater 2 and the rail head surface 4 thereof is irradiated. An infrared camera 8 continuously captures infrared rays 6 reflected from the head surface 4. The measuring unit in this embodiment is fixed to the stabilizer 12 equipped with a gyroscope. In this case, the stabilizer 12
Is fixed to the vehicle 1, the vibration during traveling of the vehicle is transmitted to the stabilizer 12, but is removed by the action of the stabilizer 12, so that the measuring unit is prevented from vibrating greatly. Therefore, the infrared camera 8 is installed on the laying rail 3
The head surface 4 can be taken as a clear image without blurring.

Further, the vehicle traveling distance indicating the photographing location is the traveling distance obtained from the vehicle speed and traveling time from the operation controller 13 of the vehicle 1. Further, various conditions such as the infrared heater 2, the infrared camera 8 and the stabilizer 12 are controlled by the controller 14. The control device 14 forms an image corresponding to the image captured by the infrared camera 8 and the distance from the operation controller 13, and transfers the image to the analysis device 9 as needed. The analysis device 9 quantitatively analyzes the “type”, “progression degree”, “occurrence place”, etc. of fatigue damage from the image transferred from the control device 14, and the result is displayed on the display device 15. I am trying.

The arithmetic unit 16 stores the analysis result of the analysis unit 9 and also includes the curved infrared heater 2, the infrared camera 8, the stabilizer 12, the operation controller 13, and the control unit 1.
4. Continuously and automatically control the analysis device 9 and the display device 15.

FIG. 6 shows an example of the analysis results displayed on the display device 15. The vertical axis represents the number of rail head surface center shellings (meaning dent fatigue damage) and the average size of the shellings, and the horizontal axis represents the subway. Distance between A station and B station (1.0K
m), which is obtained by image analysis of the number of shellings distributed per 10 cm rail length and its average size from continuous two-dimensional images between stations as shown in Figs. 2 and 3. is there.

As is clear from these figures, many fatigue damages occur at the points of stations and outside tunnels. It was also found that the fatigue damage occurring in such places is large in size. Furthermore, it was found that the distribution of fatigue damage tended to decrease relatively in the tunnel.

[0019]

As described above, the present invention detects the reflected infrared rays while irradiating the rails with the infrared rays when the vehicle is running, and evaluates the rail fatigue damage based on the information obtained by analyzing the distribution state and the positional information. This makes it possible to easily and accurately evaluate the type, progress, and location of rail fatigue damage, and it is possible to reliably know when to replace the rail. Therefore, accidents due to rail fatigue damage can be prevented and the safety of vehicle operation can be greatly improved.

[Brief description of drawings]

FIG. 1 is a diagram showing the magnitude of fatigue damage with respect to the amount of reflected infrared rays.

FIG. 2 is a diagram showing a correspondence relationship between fatigue damage due to a depression and a two-dimensional reflection infrared image.

FIG. 3 is a diagram showing a correspondence relationship between fatigue damage due to cracking and a two-dimensional reflection infrared image.

FIG. 4 is a configuration diagram of a laying rail fatigue damage evaluation apparatus by a reflection infrared method showing an embodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 5 is a detailed view of the measuring unit in FIG.

FIG. 6 is a diagram showing the number of shellings of fatigue damage and the correspondence between the average size of the shellings and the travel distance.

[Explanation of symbols]

 1 Vehicle 2 Curved Infrared Heater 3 Rail 4 Rail Head Surface 5 Incident Infrared 6 Reflected Infrared 7 Aperture 8 Infrared Camera 9 Analysis Device 10 Wheel 11 Rotation Direction 12 Stabilizer 13 Operation Control Device 14 Control Device 15 Display Device 16 Computing Device

Claims (3)

[Claims] 1. An infrared ray is incident on a rail head surface on which a vehicle travels, and infrared rays reflected from the rail head surface are continuously detected to evaluate the type and progress of fatigue damage of the rail. Evaluation Method for Fatigue Damage of Laying Rail by Reflective Infrared Method. 2. A measuring unit comprising an infrared heater for making infrared rays incident on the surface of the subject rail and an infrared camera for receiving reflected infrared rays from the surface of the subject rail, the measuring unit being a stabilizer. An analysis device that is fixed to the vehicle via, and analyzes the image pickup signal of the infrared camera in the measurement unit;
A fatigue damage evaluation device for a laying rail, characterized in that a control device for controlling the respective devices and a calculation device for storing the result of the analysis device or controlling the control device are connected. 3. The infrared heater has an opening, the infrared heater is arranged in parallel with the subject rail, and the infrared camera can receive infrared rays reflected from the surface of the subject rail passing through the opening. The laid rail fatigue damage evaluation device according to claim 2, wherein the laid rail fatigue damage evaluation device is arranged.