Railway Safety Monitoring System using Ultrasonic and IR Sensor

Railways comprise a large infrastructure and are an important mode of transportation in many countries. Railways are the lifelines of a country. The railways have become a new means of transportation owing to their capacity, speed, and reliability, being closely associated with passenger and goods transportation; they have high risk associated with them in terms of human lives and cost of assets. The poor maintenance of the railways can lead to accidents. New technologies for railways and better safety measures are introduced time to time but still accidents do occur. Thus, a proper strategy is required for maintenance and inspection of tracks. The detection of cracks in rails is a challenging problem, and much research effort has been spent in the development of reliable, repeatable crack detection methods for use on in service rails. While crack detection in the rail head and shear web is reliably achieved using Ultrasonic sensor and IR sensor. The paper presents a new crack detection method for rail, which utilizes the change in infrared emission of the rail surface during the passage of a train wheel.