Fatigue damage assessment of complex railway turnout crossings via Peridynamics-based digital twin.

Railway turnouts are essential in the train traffic route management for modern railways. Despite significant devotion to railway turnout research, one of their most common failures has not been thoroughly investigated, which is a fatigue over the turnout crossing nose. At the crossings, wheel-rail discontinuity imparts high-frequency high-magnitude forces, which are the source of fatigue failure over the crossing nose.

Structural Health Monitoring Using Fibre Optic Acoustic Emission Sensors.

Acoustic emission (AE) is widely used for condition monitoring of critical components and structures. Conventional AE techniques employ wideband or resonant piezoelectric sensors to detect elastic stress waves propagating through various types of structural materials, including composites during damage evolution. Recent developments in fibre optic acoustic emission sensors (FOAES) have enabled new ways of detecting and monitoring damage evolution using AE.