An Automatic Railway Track Crack Detection and Track Cleaning

The Indian Railways has one of the largest railway networks in the world, criss- crossing over 1,15,000km in distance, all over India. However, with regard to reliability and passenger safety Indian Railways is not up to global standards. Among other factors, cracks developed on the rails due to absence of timely detection and the associated maintenance possess serious questions on the security of operation of rail transport. A recent study revealed that over 25% of the track length is in need of replacement due to the development of cracks on it. Manual detection of tracks is cumbersome and not fully effective owing to much time consumption and requirement of skilled technicians. This project work is aimed towards addressing the issue by developing an automatic railway track crack detection system. This work introduces a project that aims in designing robust railway crack detection scheme using Ultrasonic sensor assembly system which avoids the train accidents by detecting the cracks on railway tracks. And also capable of alerting the authorities in the form of SMS messages with GSM modules. It reduces human efforts due to automation. In the present of days, we are using the measurement of track distance by using high cost LVDT with less accuracy, but we use the less cost ultrasonic sensor for above process with high accuracy. The importance of this project is applicable both day and night time detection purpose. The advantages include less cost, low power consumption and less analysis time. By this proposed system the exact location of the faulty rail track can easily be located which will mended immediately so that many lives can be saved.