Keywords: wheel set, phased array ultrasonic, automatic inspection, safety control, defect.

The wheel set is one of the most important components for railway rolling stocks which bear all static and dynamic loads and ensure the safety operation of railway transportation. At present, a manual conventional ultrasonic technique is normally used for inspecting railway wheel sets, which has the disadvantages of low efficiency inspection coverage, low stability and repeatability. With the rapid development of phased array ultrasonic techniques and industrial automation, an automatic wheel set ultrasonic inspection method with high efficiency and accuracy is proposed and described in this paper.

According to the different maintenance levels of rolling stocks, the comprehensive wheel set safety ensuring system including the daily wayside inspection equipment, the periodic online depot inspection equipment and the dismounted wheel set inspection equipment have been developed based on the phased array ultrasonic inspection technique. The system has been widely applied and plays an important role in Chinese railway wheel set safety control.

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