ENSCO Develops Joint Bar Inspection System to Aid in Identifying Cracks in Rail Joint Bars
Springfield, Va., February 20, 2006 – In response to concerns resulting from joint bar failures that caused serious railroad caused accidents, the 109th U.S. Congress directed the Federal Railroad Administration (FRA) to issue new regulations requiring each rail track owner to conduct an accurate inventory and improve the inspection and maintenance of rail joint bars in continuous welded rail (CWR) track and to provide copies of the inspection reports to the FRA for review.
Presently, joint bars are inspected by railroad maintenance personnel on foot. These methods are slow, labor intensive and often unreliable.
Working with the FRA’s Office of Research and Development, ENSCO developed a fully automated joint bar inspection system that can be used on both CWR and conventional jointed rail and will help railroads meet the new inspection standards. The system is designed to inspect, analyze and report on the joint bars on both the field and gage sides of both rails to a maximum of 50 mph.
The joint bar inspection system uses high-speed cameras to detect and report visible cracks and their locations in joint bars and downloads the information to two computers—an image acquisition and analysis computer, and a laptop that is mounted in a Hi-Railer.
The image acquisition and analysis computer captures and analyses images of joint bars and determines the location of suspected cracks. When a crack is suspected, this computer sends a message and a corresponding image to the laptop computer. The laptop sounds a buzzer and presents the visual image of the suspected crack to the inspector in the Hi-Railer. The laptop also provides image storage and inspection reports.
A Global Positioning System (GPS) is included to apply a latitude and longitude position stamp to every image acquired. This enables maintenance personnel to locate the joint bars with suspected cracks and to produce a complete inventory of all joint bars by location.
The system can be installed on a rail car or a Hi-Rail vehicle. For a Hi-Rail installation, the high-speed cameras and lights are mounted on a frame on the rear bumper, which can be folded inward when the vehicle is traveling on the road. The image acquisition and analysis computer and the laptop are located inside the vehicle.
ENSCO’s joint bar inspection system for rail is fully functional and has been proven in successful field tests on Class One railroads. Using the joint bar inspection system on CWR track will result in more rapid identification of joint bar flaws and thus significantly aid in reducing derailments.
For more information, contact Boris Nejikovsky at 703-321-4559 or Ta-Lun Yang at 703-321-4702.
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