Although there is a boom in the automotive and aviation industries, railroads are still paving the way significantly for the purpose of transportation. Indian Railway accounts for the fourth 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 tracks needs to be 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 built across different locations where we find extreme weather temperatures as well as continuous rail transport. Due to these conditions, developing flaw inside rail tracks is an obvious phenomenon which leads to the weakening of the track and weld area.
The most common cause of rail failure is fatigue fracture, which is due to imperfections present in the material or due to crack formation during services. Thus the 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 ultrasonic detection technology.
IXAR has been practising Ultrasonic Flaw Detection for many years and become a leader in India, have started its USFD for Railways in 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. To 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 Einstein-II AT, MODSONIC RAILSCAN-100 and EECI-DS-322 AT.
