Although there is boom of automotive and aviation industry, railroads are still paving its way significantly for the purpose of transportation. Indian Railway accounts for the forth largest railway network in the world by size, with a route length of 67,415km. Also 34,319km of all the routes are electrified with 25kV, 50Hz AC Electric traction.
Every cm of those rail track needs to kept in safe conditions in order to ensure the safety of thousands of passengers and crew members who ride abroad every day. These rail tracks are build across different locations where we find extreme weather temperature as well as continuous rail transport. Due to these conditions, developing flaw inside rail track is an obvious phenomena which leads to weakening of track and weld area.
Most common causes of rail failure is the fatigue fracture, which is due to imperfections present in the material or due to crack formation during services. Thus successful performance of rails is defined by their resistance to crack formation and crack propagation. Hence it is essential to identify and locate these cracks and flaws in rail and weld by taking corrective actions such as servicing them with an ultrasonic detection technology.
IXAR has been practicing Ultrasonic Flaw Detection since many years and become leader in India, have started there NDT Service for Railways since January, 2018 by deploying experts in Ultrasonic Testing. Currently IXAR has 15 RDSO approved operators with 1 QAP Head and 2 technical executives to handle all the operations. Till date IXAR has completed four projects of Ultrasonic Flaw Detection of Rail Tracks at Ahmednagar, Jaipur, Sambalpur and Lucknow.
The RDSO approved ultrasonic flaw detectors used for this purpose are MODSONIC Einestein-II AT, MODSONIC RAILSCAN-100 and EECI-DS-322 AT.