Prevention of Track Buckling and Rail Fracture by Non-destructive Testing of the Neutral Temperature in

Summary: Continuously welded rails generate forces, which can cause dangerous rail failures, if not managed. A recently developed method allows the fast non-destructive (nd) determination of rail stresses, weakened track conditions and neutral temperature in fixed track between traffic. Based on the magneto-elastic principle the interaction with the microstructure is measured. The amplitude of the detected Mag-netic Barkhausen Noise (MBN) containing the pulses generated in the rail depends on the stress. The latter may become complex in curves and under weakened track conditions, which requires special attention. The presented technique offers a wide spread use for neutral temperature measurements and covers the actual need of a non-destructive SFT measuring technique