TY - CONF A1 - Heckel, Thomas T1 - Is phased array the future in modern ultrasonic rail inspection? N2 - Compared to standard ultrasonic testing methods the application of phased arrays offers advantages and flexibility by the electronic steering possibilities to control the transmitted and received sound fields as well as the image based evaluation of the recorded scans. For more than one decade phased array systems have been introduced and used in the railway sector for the inspection of wheelsets in the workshops. Up to the present field applications of phased array systems in rail inspection are rather rare. On the other hand a lot of scientific work on rail testing using phased arrays has been carried out in the recent past. Mechanized ultrasonic rail inspection poses strong challenges e.g. due to the harsh environment, complex flaw types and high inspection speeds. Different tasks have to be carried out by non-destructive testing ranging from manufacturing inspection of thermite welds to in-service inspection for operational induced flaws in the rail head, rail web and rail foot as well as rolling contact fatigue. This work will give an overview and categorization of different present approaches for rail testing using phased array. Phased array systems typically offer digital image based inspection results. This make these systems become the perfect candidates to feed inspection data into a modern big data based workflow, using e.g. cloud computing, signal processing and data fusion for recording, positioning and tracking of flaws and artefacts in rails and to gain additional benefit. Evaluation of promising innovative approaches and solutions for phased array based ultrasonic rail inspection in the frame of “Industry 4.0” will be discussed. T2 - QNDE - Annual Review of Progress in Quantitative Nondestructive Evaluation CY - Burlington, VT, USA DA - 15.07.2018 KW - Rail Inspection Phased Array Ultrasound PY - 2018 AN - OPUS4-47211 LA - eng AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany ER -