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.
