Measurement of residual stresses in rails using Rayleigh waves

Abstract

This paper presents a new nondestructive approach for evaluating the residual longitudinal stresses in rails. The developed approach utilises the acoustoelastic effect to infer the longitudinal stress from the measured speed of Rayleigh waves propagating along the longitudinal direction. The measured Rayleigh wave speed along the longitudinal direction is shown to vary significantly across the height of the rail section, which can be directly correlated to the residual stress profile in the rail section. Unlike existing residual stress measurement techniques, such as hole-drilling or sectioning, the developed approach can be potentially applied for the in-situ residual stress measurement, without taking the rail out of service.