Review of railway rail defect non-destructive testing and monitoring

The rapid development of high-speed railway in China has brought a great challenge for the state maintenance and security assurance of railway rail infrastructure.This paper reviews variety of techniques for the inspecting and monitoring of different kinds of defects in the rail,summarizes the characteristics and limitation of the rail non-destructive testing and monitoring technologies both in China and abroad,and the application of rail on-line inspection and monitoring instruments.The following new technologies are analyzed:multiple modality physical integrated sensor and visual imaging NDT techniques for rail:the measurement of macro properties as well as micro texture characteristics for stress detection of rail:integrated fusion of non-destructive testing and health monitoring:and railway rail fast inspection and real-time monitoring based on big data management.Finally,the future development trend of railway rail NDT inspection and monitoring technology is discussed.