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Rail Squat Strategies

Rail SquatProject Manager:

Scott Simson

Sponsor Organisations:

Partner Research Organisations:

UQ, Monash

Project Leader in CRC:

Dr Bill Daniel, UQ

Staff Members:

Objectives

The aim of the project is to examine the formation of rail squats, with an aim to identify formation mechanisms, and to investigate methods of prevention of rail squats.

  1. Collation of Existing Data from Industry Partners
  2. Collection of more data in key areas to allow full understanding of mechanism.
    • Factors driving early growth
    • Considering centre of head squat initiation
    • Considering squat initiated from other defects- checking etc
  3. Gain understanding of squat formation
  4. Develop methods of characterisation and measurement
  5. Strategies to prevent squats
  6. Early detection to allow early correction
  7. Effect of changes in operations and conditions

Background

Current practice is to grind out rail squats and weld back material to replace that missing. This is labour intensive and may not prevent the squat from redeveloping. The present approach aims to firstly understand the mechanisms of squat formation and make possible predictive maintenance, early detection and early correction to avoid the problem developing.

Outcomes

Knowledge Base: Relative importance of keys factors in squat initiation and growth:

  • Rules for avoiding conditions of squat formation
  • Models for predicting initiation and growth
  • Manuals, Practices for classification, detection, measurement and minimization of squat initiation and growth

Tools for early detection: NDI - instruments and methods

Pro-active strategies for network management of squats