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Posted by amit - 10-04-2017, 08:14 PM |
RAILWAY TRACK CRACK DETECTION AUTONOMOUS VEHICLE Abstract : India has one of the world's largest railway networks, manual Inspection and detecting a crack on these railways tracks is very tedious process and consumes lot of time and human resource. The project aims in designing railway track crack detection autonomous vehicle using Microcontroller, IR obstacle Sensors assembly system, which detects the cracks along its path; the vehicle is also capable of monitoring the location of the crack by using the GPS module and alerts through SMS messages using GSM module. The central component of the whole system is a PIC Microcontroller. The vehicle is powered with the help of Solar panel and Lead Acid battery assembly. The vehicle moves along the path of railway track and IR Obstacle sensors mounted on the vehicle front end will inspect the track along the path. When any crack or deformation is detected on the track the vehicle stops and the location of the crack is identified and the location Latitude and Longitude coordinates are procured using the GPS module and the GSM module is used to send these Location coordinates in the form of Short Message Service (SMS) to the Pre-defied number. Keywords: Micro controller (PIC16F877A), IR obstacle Sensor, Railway Cracks, GSM/GPRS, GPS Module, DC Motor (Engine) The Indian railway network today has a track length of 113,617 kilometers (70,598 mi).over a route of 63,974 kilometers (39,752 mi) and 7,083 stations. It is the fourth largest railway network in the world. Indian rail network is still on the growth trajectory trying to fuel the economic needs of our nation. Though rail transport in India growing at a rapid pace, the associated safety infrastructure facilities have not kept up with the aforementioned proliferation. Our facilities are inadequate compared to the international standards and as a result, there have been frequent derailments that have resulted in severe loss of valuable human lives and property as well. On further analysis of the factors that cause these rail accidents, recent statistics reveal that approximately 60% of all the rail accidents have derailments as their cause, of which about 90% are due to cracks on the rails either due to natural causes (like excessive expansion due to heat) or due to antisocial elements. Hence these cracks in railway lines have been a perennial problem which has to be addressed with utmost attention due to the frequency of rail usage in India. These cracks and other problems with the rails generally go unnoticed due to improper maintenance and the currently irregular and manual track line monitoring that is being carried out. The high frequency of trains and the unreliability of manual labor have put forth a need for an automated system to monitor the presence of crack on the railway lines. Owing to the crucial repercussions of this problem, this paper presents an implementation of an efficient and cost effective solution suitable for large scale application. In previously existing system, the same concept is used using LED and LDR sensor assembly. The main drawback of the system is that LED and LDR needs to be exactly aligned opposite to each other to detect the crack, also the environment needs to be controlled to detect the true values from LDR. For this reason, we have used IR Obstacle sensor, which has only one module that has both transmitter and receiver and alignment will not be an issue. The main objective of the project is to identify any crack or deformation on the railway track using this setup, which can be implemented in live by Railway authorities. The proposed setup would make the inspection and maintenance of railways tracks easier and help them to monitor efficiently by replacing the human inspection which is currently followed. The design of the vehicle and software related to it are very simple and can be easily adopted by the present system. |