Votum

"Tomographic 2.1." - Railway car wheelsets testing

Non-destructive testing is one of the most important security equipments of the railway transport. "Votum"  company  leads wide scientific and methodological activity along with leading companies specialized in ultrasonic nondestructive testing of railways such as St. Petersburg State Communications University and Russian Railway Research Institute. Purpose of this partnership is the practical implementation of modern scientific and technical developments aimed at greater security of  the rail transport.

UD4-T has  a built-in procedure of complex ultrasonic testing of railway car wheelsets, which is highly used at enterprises involved in the production, maintenance and repair of wheelsets including the ultrasonic testing during restoration of the worn-out elements or their heat strengthening.

The specialized testing procedure for railway car wheelsets provides the testing of:

• Axles of the RU, RU-1, RU-1SH types;
• Rims of the solid-rolled wheels (using the USK-4);
• Pre-rim zone of disks of the solid-rolled wheels (using the USK-4);
• Flanges of the solid-rolled wheels (using the USK-4 or manually).

"Votum" company has developed the scanning device of a new type - USK-4T for testing of railway car wheelsets. Unlike USK-4, it allows to trace the probe linear movement and automatically sends the flaw area coordinates to the flaw detector. It is very important for inclusion of tomographic images into the report. While working with the Tomographic 2.1 flaw detector, the USK-4T testing modes are switched automatically. While working with other flaw detectors, the switching happens according to the bace modification.

"Tomographic 2.1 UD4-T" provides the functionalities, which, on principle, cannot be realized by other devices. Tomographic 2.1 development concept is aimed at the maximum decrease of the human factor due to implementation of such modes as:

• acoustic contact tracking;
• full monitoring of the probe;
• attenuation analysis of tested materials;
• flaws visualization, including the equivalent square, occurrence depth, space orientation.

The comparative tests established that UD4-T provides greater testing productivity and simultaneously increases the testing reliability due to self-testing, simple setting and automation of the most testing operations.

Implementation of new testing methods does not require the change of UD4-T instrumentation pool as the additional methods are included only by adding of the corresponding software. It allows to reject the specialized flaw detectors, to unify the instrumentation pool, metrological assurance and technical support.

The special " Automated Operator's Workbench" software delivered  with the UD4-T allows to document the testing results and to save them in the electronic database, as well as to issue the wheel set passport.