Fretting crack detection of a railway axle with a mounted wheel using an induced current potential drop and electromagnetic-field distribution

There has been a growing interest in utilizing modeling techniques to design the scan area of non-destructive testing methods prior to field application. To ensure the safety of railway axles, a non-destructive inspection method that is superior to the existing non-destructive inspection techniques is needed. In this study, the induced potential drop method was applied to the crack detection of the press-fitted axles, and a new ICPD sensor was designed and analyzed through electromagnetic simulation. The crack identification of railway axles using ICPD was performed in the axial and circumferential directions. The results showed that when the crack depth of a press fitted axle is 1.0 mm, the crack can be detected at a distance of 10 mm from the crack using this method, and the cracks in mounted wheelset can definitely detect under condition of frequency of 30 kHz and current of 2 A.