A system and method for inspecting a railway track bed using a plurality of sensors that are synchronized for rapid interrogation of a railway track bed while the sensors are in motion at a high rate of speed.

An inspection system for inspecting the track of an amusement ride with at least one rail. A vehicle is provided that is designed to ride along the track. The vehicle supports cameras. The cameras are positioned in unobstructed areas. The cameras image the rail from different angles as the vehicle rides along the track. The images recorded by the cameras are reviewed to identify any defect or issue with the rail or its supporting framework that may impact from the safety of the ride.

A system for nondestructive evaluation of railroad rails, includes a carriage including a plurality of wheels movably supporting the carriage on the rails, a source of vibration mounted on the carriage and connected to transmit vibrations of a preselected frequency to test regions on the rails through the wheels to cause an increase in temperature of the rails at locations of flaws in the test regions, an infrared detector for recording thermal images of the test regions to detect the increase in temperature of the location of the flaws, a controller connected to actuate the infrared detector to record the thermal images of the vibrations impacting the test regions, and store the thermal images recorded by the infrared detector.

Rail vehicle (1) having rail wheels (3,4) accommodated to guide the rail vehicle along a railway track (2) and said vehicle comprising means for detection of a flaw or flaws in the railway track, wherein the rail vehicle is provided with a noncontact vibrometer (9,10) which is arranged to measure vibrational movement of the railway track surface.

A rail position measurement device that measures a three-dimensional position of a rail using a measurement vehicle includes: a position posture measurement device to measure a position and a posture of the measurement vehicle; and a laser scanner that is a sensor installed on the measurement vehicle so as to be capable of irradiating at least a web and a bottom of a side surface of the rail with laser light and used for measuring the three-dimensional position of the rail.

The present invention defines a method of determining a vertical profile signal of a rail surface that includes, obtaining a vertical acceleration signal acc.sub.1, by measuring vertical acceleration of a bogie of a rail vehicle that runs on the rail surface; processing the vertical acceleration signal to obtain a vertical velocity signal; determining the vertical profile signal of the rail surface, by using the vertical acceleration signal and the vertical velocity signal as inputs to a simulation model of the bogie, the model having an unsprung mass connected to a sprung mass, the vertical acceleration signal acc.sub.1 represents the vertical acceleration of the unsprung mass; and measuring a linear velocity signal of the rail vehicle, the linear velocity signal is used in the step of determining to convert the vertical profile signal from the time domain to the distance domain.

Example implementations relate to receiving vibration notifications from vibration sensors. In example implementations, a subset of a plurality of vibration sensors from which vibration notifications are expected may be identified based on a position of a train along a track. The plurality of vibration sensors may be arranged in a predetermined order on the track. Whether vibration notifications have not been received from consecutive, with respect to the predetermined order, vibration sensors in the subset may be determined.

This invention utilizes two sensing technologies in combination with or in isolation of an automated inspection vehicle to conduct inspections of internal rail flaws in steel railroad track. A vehicle equipped with X-radiation sensing is used as a secondary method to assess the deviations in magnetic fields that are sensed by a primary sensor consisting of a single or multiple magnetometers. The magnetometers sense changes in magnetic field that are correlated to the flaws inside the steel rail. The combination of technologies improves the probability to detect railroad flaws and offers the ability to accurately track and monitor flaws.

A system and method is disclosed for predicting and comparing wear scenarios in a rail system. The method can include generating and running a contact model of the interaction between a rail and a train car to produce a simulated loading on the rail for a predetermined time period; generating and running a wear model based on the material properties and/or friction modifier properties of the rail using the simulated loading to produce a simulated wear profile of the rail for the predetermined time period; obtaining a grinding profile to be performed on the rail during the predetermined time period; and generating an updated rail profile by modifying the rail profile by the simulated wear profile and the grinding profile. The method can predict and compare crack growth over time, and provide a financial model and comparison of costs and benefits for different maintenance protocols for the rail system.

Systems, methods and devices for a computer vision-based pixel-level rail components detection system using an improved one-stage instance segmentation model and prior knowledge, aiming to inspect railway components in a rapid, accurate, and convenient fashion.