• International Journal of Railway
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• v.5 no.3
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• pp.129-134
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• 2012

Contact fatigue damages on the rail surface, such as head checks and squats are a growing problem. The fatigue cracks forming on the contact surface grow according to load and lubricating conditions and may end up breaking the rail. Rail fracture can be avoided by preventing the cracks from reaching the critical length. Therefore, the crack growth rate needs to be estimated precisely according to the conditions of the track and load to develop a maintenance plan against rail damages. Therefore, it is important to understand the mechanism of cracks initiation and growth on a rail due to repetitive rolling contact. In this study, we have investigated the crack growth behavior on the rail surface by using the twin-disc tests and the finite element analysis.

• Journal of Internet Computing and Services
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• v.21 no.6
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• pp.23-31
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• 2020

This study was carried out to generate various images of railroad surfaces with random defects as training data to be better at the detection of defects. Defects on the surface of railroads are caused by various factors such as friction between track binding devices and adjacent tracks and can cause accidents such as broken rails, so railroad maintenance for defects is necessary. Therefore, various researches on defect detection and inspection using image processing or machine learning on railway surface images have been conducted to automate railroad inspection and to reduce railroad maintenance costs. In general, the performance of the image processing analysis method and machine learning technology is affected by the quantity and quality of data. For this reason, some researches require specific devices or vehicles to acquire images of the track surface at regular intervals to obtain a database of various railway surface images. On the contrary, in this study, in order to reduce and improve the operating cost of image acquisition, we constructed the 'Defective Railroad Surface Regeneration Model' by applying the methods presented in the related studies of the Generative Adversarial Network (GAN). Thus, we aimed to detect defects on railroad surface even without a dedicated database. This constructed model is designed to learn to generate the railroad surface combining the different railroad surface textures and the original surface, considering the ground truth of the railroad defects. The generated images of the railroad surface were used as training data in defect detection network, which is based on Fully Convolutional Network (FCN). To validate its performance, we clustered and divided the railroad data into three subsets, one subset as original railroad texture images and the remaining two subsets as another railroad surface texture images. In the first experiment, we used only original texture images for training sets in the defect detection model. And in the second experiment, we trained the generated images that were generated by combining the original images with a few railroad textures of the other images. Each defect detection model was evaluated in terms of 'intersection of union(IoU)' and F1-score measures with ground truths. As a result, the scores increased by about 10~15% when the generated images were used, compared to the case that only the original images were used. This proves that it is possible to detect defects by using the existing data and a few different texture images, even for the railroad surface images in which dedicated training database is not constructed.

• KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems (TIIS)
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• v.14 no.12
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• pp.4763-4775
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• 2020

This research aims to develop a deep learning-based method that automatically detects and segments the defects on railroad surfaces to reduce the cost of visual inspection of the railroad. We developed our segmentation model by modifying a fully convolutional network model [1], a well-known segmentation model used for machine learning, to detect and segment railroad surface defects. The data used in this research are images of the railroad surface with one or more defect regions. Railroad images were cropped to a suitable size, considering the long height and relatively narrow width of the images. They were also normalized based on the variance and mean of the data images. Using these images, the suggested model was trained to segment the defect regions. The proposed method showed promising results in the segmentation of defects. We consider that the proposed method can facilitate decision-making about railroad maintenance, and potentially be applied for other analyses.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.29 no.6
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• pp.613-620
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• 2012

Rails are subjected to damage from rolling contact fatigue, which leads to defects such as cracks. Rolling contact fatigue damages on the surface of rail such as head check, squats are one of growing problems. Another form of rail surface damage, known as "Ballast imprint" has become apparent. This form of damage is associated with ballast particles becoming trapped between the wheel and the surface of rail. These defects are still one of the key reasons for rail maintenance and replacement. In this study, we have investigated whether the ballast imprint is an initiator of head check type cracks and effect of defect size using Finite element analysis. The FE analysis were used to investigate stresses and strains in subsurface of defects according to variation of defect size. Based on loading cycles obtained from FE analysis, fatigue analysis for each point was carried out.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.27 no.8
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• pp.42-47
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• 2010

In this paper, the characteristics of contact surface damage due to fretting in a press-fitted shaft below the fretting fatigue limit are proposed by experimental methods. A series of fatigue tests and interrupted fatigue tests of small scale press-fitted specimen were carried out by using rotating bending fatigue test machine. Macroscopic and microscopic characteristics were examined using scanning electron microscope (SEM), optical microscope or profilometer. It is found that fretting fatigue cracks were initiated even under the fretting fatigue limit on the press-fitted shafts by fretting damage. The fatigue cracks of press-fitted shafts were initiated from the edge of contact surface and propagated inward in a semi-elliptical shape. Furthermore, the fretting wear rates at the contact edge are increased rapidly at the initial stage of total fatigue life. After steep increasing, the increase of wear rate is nearly constant under the load condition below the fretting fatigue limit. It is thus suggested that the fretting wear must be considered on the fatigue life evaluation because the fatigue crack nucleation and propagation process is strongly related to the evolution of surface profile by fretting wear in the press-fitted structures.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Precision Engineering
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.565-571
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• 2011

Because most fatigue cracks in wheel and rail take place by rolling contact of wheel and rail in railroad industry, it is critical to understand the rolling contact phenomena, especially for the three-dimensional situation. This paper presents an approach to steady-state rolling contact problem of three-dimensional contact bodies, with or without tangential force, based on the finite element method. The steady-state conditions are controlled by the applied relative slip and tangential force. The three-dimensional distribution of tangential traction and contact stresses on the contact surface are investigated. Results show that the distribution of tangential traction and contact stresses on the contact surface varies rapidly as a result of the variation of stick-slip region. The tangential traction is very close in form to Carter's distribution.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2005.03a
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• pp.811-818
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• 2005

Stability analyses on the 17 railroad cut-off soil slopes were carried out. The influences of rainfall infiltration on the slope stabilities were taken into account by seepage analyses using finite element method and by assuming ground water tables to be located adjacent to soil surface. The validity of those analyses were evaluated by comparing the slope failure characteristics between analysis results and the past failure records. The analyses were not appropriate to estimate the failure surface and the method considering only the increase of pore-water pressure (reduction of matric suction) as the influence of rainfall cannot appropriately estimate the surficial failures that occurred most of the cut-off soil slopes. For the better estimation of the surficial failure, the influence of water flows over slope surface which erode soil mass and/or increase driving force, should be evaluated and considered.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2007.11a
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• pp.1940-1945
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• 2007

The wheelsets are one of most important component: damages in wheel tread and press fitted axle are a significant cost for railway industry. Since failure in railway wheelset can cause a disaster, regular inspection of defects in wheels and axles are mandatory. Ultrasonic testing, acoustic emission and eddy current testing method and so on regularly check railway wheelset in service. However, it is difficult to use this method because of its high viscosity and because its sensitivity is affected by temperature. Also, due to noise echoes it is difficult to detect defects initiation clearly with ultrasonic testing. It is necessary to develop a non-destructive technique that is superior to conventional NDT techniques in order to ensure the safety of railway wheelset. In the present paper, the new NDT technique is applied to the detection of surface defects for railway wheelset. To detect the defects for railway wheelset, the sensor for defect detection is optimized and the tests are carried out with respect to surface and internal defects each other. The results show that the surface crack depth of 1.5 mm in press fitted axle and internal crack in wheel could be detected by using the new method. The ICFPD method is useful to detect the defect that initiated in the tread of railway wheelset.

• Proceedings of the KSEEG Conference
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• 2007.04a
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• pp.327-330
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• 2007

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• Proceedings of the KSME Conference
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• 2008.11a
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• pp.127-131
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• 2008

In the disk braking of the railway trains, kinetic energy of the vehicles is converted into thermal energy by friction between a brake disk and the pad materials. This can be cause of the iterative thermal shock and generates thermal cracks on the brake disk surface. In this study, we show the comparative thermal fatigue test procedures and thermal crack analysis process to evaluate the thermal fatigue characteristics of candidate materials designed for development of heat-resistant brake disk material. We carried out tests on the conventional brake disk materials used for Saemaul and Mugunghwa trains, then we comparatively analyzed the thermal crack initiation and propagation on the surface of a specimen. A thermal fatigue test procedure and a crack analysis process were suggested to evaluate the heat resistance of the developed materials at later studies.