INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DEVELOPMENTS IN ENGINEERING RESEARCH, ICDER - 2014
REAL TIME IMPLEMENTATION OF RAILWAY TRACK FAULT DETECTING SYSTEM USING IR AND ULTRASONIC TECHNOGY GITABASHYAN R *1, SHANMUGAM P *2 1
Final Year, B.E., Electronics and Instrumentation Engineering 2 Prefinal Year, B.E., Electrical and Electronics Engineering * National Engineering College, India 1
2
rgbashyan@gmail.com shanmugameeenec@gmail.com
Abstract- Railway network is one of the world’s largest
expanded during summer, contract during winter and there is
transportation network aiming to provide continual
a possible of corrosion in rainy season. So, the cracks are
access to all people. In the modern trend, the quality of
further expanded to produce a large gap between the tracks.
service aims for secured travel. As the rail network face
Also by the movement of the train above it. The main
adverse weather throughout the year, the rail material
objective of the paper is to check the track and to detect the
tends to lose its strength. Hence continual maintenance is
cracks present in the track. The people are working
required to ensure the proper functioning of trains. These
scientifically to overcome this problem.
maintenance are done manually by technical and labour
This paper works on testing of cracks using IR sensor and
team which involves testing, analyzing and report
Ultrasonic Sensor, the preprogrammed Microcontroller
submission. The intention of this paper is to provide cost
measures the intensity of defect and send the signal to
effective and regular testing of rail tract by autonomous
railway control room via GSM module. The robotic vehicle
robot designed in embedded system. This model of
is equipped with GPS facility so that when high intense crack
manless Non-Destructive Testing robot uses Infrared
is detected the maintenance team will reach the exact location
sensor and Ultrasonic Sensing elements. With the
and take all further processes mainly including exact fault
implementation of this system the whole railway network
dimension, depth and its nature. This system provide two
will provide secured journey to the people and save all
levels of signal, a threshold signal (dangerous level) and a
lives and properties.
typical fault signal (acceptable level). Railway monitors the
Keywords- IR Sensor, Ultrasonic Sensor, Hall Effect
process continuously and will take all necessary action.
Sensor, Microcontroller, GSM, GPS.
I. INTRODUCTION
II. NON-DESTRUCTIVE TESTING ELEMENTS
In India, the tracks are more than 10,000 of km. Due to
The interconnecting of the elements is the challenging one,
frequent climatic changes, the tracks lose their stability. So,
because the output of the IR receiver is never linearly
cracks are formed in the tracks .We know that tracks are
connected to the microcontroller input for its safety purpose.
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INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DEVELOPMENTS IN ENGINEERING RESEARCH, ICDER - 2014
So, we prefer the capacitor and resistor combination
By replacing the optical incremental encoder by
interfacing with the IR transmitter and receiver. In addition,
optoelectronic instrument we get long range distance
the microcontroller control the motor. So, we use a motor
measurement and also compatible form for microcontroller.
controller to control the motor, we can also use optocoupler
The alarm is coupled to it for alerting the railway staffs. The
and motor circuit to control the DC motor. The optical
LCD module is interconnected to the system to display the
incremental encoder is used to count the number of
distances and test level.
revolutions. One revolution is equal to one bit. In this way, we can calculate the distance moved by the robot vehicle above the track.
III. BLOCK DIAGRAM
Optoelectronic Displacement Instrument
LCD Module
IR Transmitter
RS 232 Cable Receiver
GSM Module
Microcontroller Railway Control Room
Ultra sonic sensor
ALARM
Robot platform Battery and
voltage regulator
Motor Driver
Motor
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INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DEVELOPMENTS IN ENGINEERING RESEARCH, ICDER - 2014
IV. BLOCK EXPLANATION AND OPERATION
the reduced instruction set computer (RISC) architecture.
The inputs are IR transmitter and receiver, ultrasonic sensor, optoelectronic displacement module. The outputs are motor driver, LCD module, GSM module and DC motor. The robot is placed on the rail track. The testing process starts automatically by the control of PIC controller. The IR and Ultrasonic sensors work simultaneously. These sensors test
The microcontroller processes the sensor output to compute the fault level. The internal ADC of the microcontroller is used to convert the analog output of the sensor into its digital equivalent value. The internal ADC of the microcontroller has eight channels of analog inputs and gives 10-bit digital output.
for any crack, damage in the track. These signals are converted to digital and fed to PIC, here the controller is preprogrammed with some threshold data, when the sensors outputs are above the threshold value (dangerous crack) this information is immediately send to Railway Control Room with alarm warning and details about distance from station. The vehicle location is tracked by the GPS system attached with it. If the test value is below the threshold value then the information are send to control room. Then vehicle moves to next step. The distance from the station is measured by long range optoelectronic displacement instrument. Both test result and distance is send via GSM module to the control room. The robot vehicle proceeds to test whole track step by step
using
DC
motor
driven
by
PIC
command.
Microcontrollers- Microcontrollers are widely used in embedded
systems
products.
Microcontroller
is
a
programmable device. A microcontroller has a CPU in addition to a fixed amount of RAM, ROM, I/O ports and a timer embedded all on a single chip. The fixed amount of onchip
ROM,
RAM
and
number
of
I/O
ports
in
microcontrollers makes them ideal for many applications in which cost and space are critical.
V. SENSOR A sensor is a converter that measures a physical quantity and converts it into a signal which can be read by an observer or by an electronic instrument. IR transmitter and receiver is a sensor using to detect the gap between the tracks. It originally used for operating the device wirelessly from a short line-ofsight distance. Commonly, remote controls are Consumer IR devices used to issue commands from a distance to televisions or other consumer electronics such as stereo systems, DVD players and dimmers. Remote controls for these devices are usually small wireless handheld objects with an array of buttons for adjusting various settings such as television channel, track number, and volume. In fact, for the majority of modern devices with this kind of control, the remote control contains all the function controls while the controlled device itself has only a handful of essential primary controls. Most of these remote controls communicate to their respective devices via infrared signals and a few via radio
signals.
Earlier
remote
controls
in
1973
used ultrasonic tones. The remote control code, and thus the required remote control device, is usually specific to a product line, but there are universal remotes, which emulate
PIC 16F877A microcontroller- IC PIC 16F877A is an 8-bit
the remote control made for most major brand devices. The
microcontroller with 8k x 14-bit flash program memory, 368
main
bytes of RAM and many others extra peripherals like ADC,
is infrared (IR) light. The signal between a remote control
USART,
handset and the device it controls consists of pulses of
timers,
compare
capture
and
pulse-width
modulation modules, and analog comparators. It is based on
technology
used
in
home
remote
controls
infrared light, which is invisible to the human eye.
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The transmitted wave reflects back to receiver when there is a change in propagating medium. Hence when crack, hole is present in the material then the echo pulse is reflected back to receiver, generating the fault detection signal. Non-contact type ultrasonic transducers use high air impedance matching design and output signal conditioning circuit which is easily adopted in this system. VI.MOTOR DRIVER: These
devices
consist
of
two
independent
voltage
comparators that are designed to operate from a single power supply over a wide range of voltages. Operation from dual supplies also is possible as long as the difference between the Ultrasonic transducers[1] used in the time domain
two supplies is 2 V to 36 V, and VCC is at least 1.5 V more
transducers measure the time of flight and the velocity of
positive than the input common-mode voltage. Current drain
longitudinal, shear, and surface waves. Time domain
is independent of the supply voltage. The outputs can be
transducers measure density and thickness, detect and locate
connected to other open-collector outputs to achieve wired-
defects, and measure elastic and mechanical properties of
AND relationships. The LM193 is characterized for operation
materials. These transducers are also used for interface and
from –55°C to 125°C. The LM293 and LM293A are
dimensional analysis, proximity detection, remote sensing,
characterized for operation from –25°C to 85°C. The LM393
and robotics.
and LM393A are characterized for operation from 0°C to 70°C. The LM2903 is characterized for operation from – 40°C to 125°C. The LM2903Q is tested from –40°C to 125°C and is manufactured to demanding automotive requirements.
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INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON DEVELOPMENTS IN ENGINEERING RESEARCH, ICDER - 2014
VII. ADVANTAGES
IX. CURRENT RESEARCHES
1. Easy to construct
Research about the conventional methods of railway crack
2. More useful in remote areas.
detection include mechanical system and eddy current based
3. Easily and Automatic operation
approaches, we find that they are expensive in nature which
4. More savings in economy
does not warrant their use in the current scenario.
5. Avoid accidents 6. Frequently used
X. CONCLUSION VIII. FURTHER APPLICATIONS
1. Military applications 2. Landmine detection 3. Firing situation 4. Flight runway 5. Boiler Tube 6. Refinery pipe line
The implementation of this automatic testing technology in the railways is easy and efficient in flaw detection, Hence on using this system the government can get more benefits like easy, automatic and cost effective testing of flaws in the rail track. We can handle one of the serious concern of today’s leap in the number of accidental deaths and save more lives and properties.
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