Ultrasonic Synthetic Aperture Focusing Technique for Inspection of Railway Crossings (Frogs)
Acronym: SAFTInspect
Funding body: European Commission
Status: Completed
The European rail infrastructure employs high manganese, high strength steel components at safety critical locations such as crossings. Restricted access to these assets limits the range of NDT techniques available for in-service inspection to those capable of inspection from the top surface. The SAFTInspector proposal will enable efficient in-service inspection of manganese rail assets by applying Phased Array UT full matrix capture in combination with a novel post processing technique called Synthetic Aperture Focusing Technique (SAFT). This will dramatically reduce the time required at the asset and effectively remove the need for additional interpretation by highly skilled operators.